UPDATE @ 12:06 pm on Sept. 18:

In a follow-up to yesterday's post, Laborers spokesman Jacob Hay said: "We have no immediate plans to leave Change to Win or rejoin the AFL-CIO. We do continue believe a united labor movement is the best way to fight for working people and discussions towards that end are ongoing."

UNITE HERE, one of the unions that broke off from the AFL-CIO in 2005 and joined the coalition of dissident unions that made up the Change to Win coalition, formally rejoined the AFL-CIO today as the federation's quadrennial convention comes to a close in Pittsburgh.

While newly elected AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka trumpeted the move, no one who follows the labor movement closely should be surprised--the UNITE HERE board voted to re-affiliate with the AFL-CIO earlier this year. Moreover, the move suggests that the return of the dissident unions to the federation is likely to be incremental, not in unison as some labor leaders had hoped last spring when the AFL-CIO and Change to Win, and the independent National Education Association began talks on uniting labor all under one roof.

In an interview just prior to the convention, outgoing AFL-CIO president John Sweeney acknowledged that "they probably won't come back as a group, at first; that it will be individual unions that may come back."

Who's the next Change to Win union that may be rejoin the AFL-CIO? That could be LIUNA, the Laborers' International Union of North America. In an interview before the convention, American Federation of State County and Local Employees Gerald McEntee said, "My own judgment is that the Laborers are coming back."

Meanwhile, not all of UNITE HERE is rejoining the AFL-CIO. The union, which was a merger of apparel workers and hotel and restaurant employees in 2004, has undergone its own bitter divorce. A faction of more than 100,000 members loyal to Bruce Raynor, who formerly headed UNITE, decided to merge with the Service Employees International Union, one the leaders of Change to Win, earlier this year.

The AFL-CIO gets the remaining 265,000 UNITE HERE members lead by John Wilhelm. While Change to Win leaders predicted four years ago that their group would become an organizing powerhouse, the coalition has not lived up that boast.