Since taking over as President in October 2012, Taylor oversaw the Union’s organizing of 140,000 people from over 1,000 new workplaces, with more than half coming out of Right-to-Work states

Taylor also leaves behind a legacy defined by the rallying call that “One Job Should Be Enough”—taking his experience building UNITE HERE’s Culinary Union in Nevada to expanded geographies, while pioneering victories at the bargaining table and the ballot box

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NEW YORK—On March 31, 2024, D. Taylor stepped down from his role as President of UNITE HERE, leaving behind a legacy defined by record union growth and groundbreaking raised standards for service-sector jobs. Taylor prioritized organizing in places written off by most, continuing that growth even as the global pandemic devastated the hospitality industry. Over 140,500 workers joined UNITE HERE since Taylor’s presidency started in October 2012, with over half coming from states with Right-to-Work laws.  

Taylor believes that if you can build a powerful union in a once-red Right-to-Work state like Nevada, you can build union power anywhere. His storied career in the labor movement could have been marred in his first full term as International Union President by the election of Trump or a second term when a global pandemic suddenly led to 98% of UNITE HERE’s membership out-of-work. Instead, Taylor prioritized new organizing in typically “low wage” industries, centered on the very workers most vulnerable to Trump’s attacks. In so doing, Taylor established UNITE HERE as the fastest-growing private-sector affiliate of the AFL-CIO. In the wake of COVID-19, Taylor led the Union’s comeback by expanding UNITE HERE’s reach in places like the Deep South. The Union also mounted the largest-labor-led door-to-door canvassing operation in 2020 that elected the most pro-union presidential administration in American history in key battleground states.   

Before his current role, Taylor served as the head of UNITE HERE’s Culinary Union, the Union’s largest affiliate representing 60,000 casino workers in Las Vegas and Reno. He spent the 1980s and 1990s building the Local into the powerhouse it is today, both at the ballot box and the bargaining table, growing membership from 18,000 in 1987 to 55,000 by 2012. The political machine that UNITE HERE’s Culinary Union is known for today — including the legacy of Senator Harry Reid — was cemented under Taylor’s tenure in Nevada as the state shifted from red to a battleground. In recent years, UNITE HERE expanded on Nevada’s success of running large-scale worker-powered field programs to lead the biggest labor canvassing operations in other key battleground states.  

 Record Union Growth in Hospitality Jobs 

•  After succeeding John Wilhelm as President of UNITE HERE in 2012, Taylor announced ambitious organizing goals at the Union’s 2014 Convention, declaring a goal of organizing 50,000 new members in five years. The Union surpassed this goal by organizing 62,000 new members by the 2019 Convention (24% growth), making UNITE HERE the fastest-growing private-sector Union in the AFL-CIO by 2019.  
• Despite pandemic setbacks UNITE HERE has organized an additional 89,000 new members into the Union since March 2020 — for a total of 140,000 under D. Taylor’s Presidency since late 2012. Other organizing victories under Taylor include:   
• 71,000 workers organized in Right-to-Work states (more than half of UNITE HERE’s new organizing since Taylor took the presidency) 
• Over 1,000 new workplaces organized since October 2012 
• Nearly 100,000 gaming workers since 2004 when Taylor held the dual role of National Gaming Director for UNITE HERE 
• Breakthrough victories in the Deep South, e.g. over two-thirds of Biloxi, MS gaming market and 2,500 New Orleans hospitality workers in gaming, hotels, and food service organized since Katrina’s devastation, winning the highest standards in the Mississippi and Louisiana service industry (top wage standards, affordable health care, and pensions) 
• 100% union casino density on the Las Vegas Strip, including thousands of workers at the Venetian, Palazzo, and Fontainebleau who won recognition and are negotiating a first contract as part of the 2023-24 “best contract ever” citywide victory for Las Vegas Culinary Union members. 

“One Job Should Be Enough” for All Workers to Survive—and Thrive 

“One Job Should Be Enough” became UNITE HERE’s defining rally call during Taylor’s tenure, reflecting Taylor’s commitment to improving standards for hospitality workers as the union grows. Taylor grew up in a small town in Virginia with a single mom who taught him that hard work should pay off with a comfortable life. While working at a tavern in his hometown’s Colonial Williamsburg, he had his first brush with unions: an organizing drive led by today’s UNITE HERE Local 25. (Local 25 represents that unit to this day.) Taylor served during college as a waiter in D.C. where he became a shop steward with the Local, cementing his commitment to organizing for better standards in the hospitality industry. Taylor was hired in 1981 to work with the Union in Nevada.  

Under Taylor’s leadership, workers across the hospitality industry — housekeepers, cooks, dishwashers, cocktail servers, bartenders, bellmen, cashiers, and more — have seen wages surge, along with many other life-changing benefits, such as affordable, high-quality healthcare and pensions. Taylor’s vision has led to a transformation in the standards for work in hospitality, affecting tens of thousands of jobs. Accomplishments include:   

• Taking on the healthcare industrial complex with a comprehensive view to address everything from insurers (by establishing the labor movement’s gold standard UNITE HERE Health Plan) to hospitals (banning Surprise Medical Bill legislation), to prescription medication (pharmaceutical transparency legislation in Nevada and California), to the experience of going to the doctor (opening world-class health centers for members and their dependents who are insured by the Health Plan) 
• Establishing strong contract language and protections around AI and technology in hospitality, including in Las Vegas’s 2018 and 2023 contract negotiations that held the city on the brink of a strike until 50,000 hospitality workers historic contract language that sets clear goals regarding technology and automation for worker retention, job training/re-training, advance notice of implementation, and a service recognition package.
• 9,000 contracted food service workers including 4,500 at Google — representing 99.9% of food service workers inside Google across North America — just won historic second contracts that set a standard for all industry food service workers, including a minimum raise of $7 an hour over the life of the contract, continued free family healthcare, layoff protections, gender identity protections, and more. 
• Protecting housekeepers, a workforce with high injury rates and hit hard by post-pandemic industry job cuts, with local legislation requiring daily room cleaning in hotels as well as state-wide in New Jersey and Nevada.

Many of these wins against multi-billion-dollar hospitality companies were accomplished through hard-won campaigns with aggressive tactics. The strike, in Taylor’s view, is the ultimate swing workers can take for a home run deal at the bargaining table — and one he often has been willing to take. In his overall tenure with the Union, Taylor has spent almost a decade of his life working on active strikes, including the Frontier Casino strike in Las Vegas in the 1990s —  one of the longest, most successful strikes in U.S. history. As UNITE HERE President, Taylor oversaw major strikes that changed the landscape for hospitality jobs, including Atlantic City’s 1,100-worker strike at the Trump Taj Mahal in 2016 and the multi-city 7,700 Marriott worker strike in 2018.   

From the Bargaining Table to the Ballot Box: Building a More Empowered Working Class 

Bucking trends and the status quo, Taylor has always led the labor movement with a vision for an empowered working class led by diverse voices. Whether it’s throwing down to elect pro-worker candidates that support working people or running union members for office, Taylor saw politics as another avenue to support broader goals for an empowered working class. This became particularly evident during the pandemic when the union successfully lobbied for:   

• Winning back jobs for tens of thousands of workers via recall rights in contract bargaining or legislation post-pandemic layoffs — with new laws protecting hospitality workers in nearly 20 cities and statewide in Nevada, Connecticut, and California, as well as in hundreds of workplace agreements.  
• Free 100% COBRA coverage for laid-off workers in the American Rescue Plan—an achievement that Congress had never before passed—in which UNITE HERE signed up over 40,000 unemployed and underemployed workers for six months of free benefits. 
• Full pay and benefits affecting 10,000 airline catering workers with federal legislation that guaranteed pay for 18 months while travel slowed during the pandemic. 

Taylor has built a program to elect candidates that prioritize economic issues and support working people. Since Taylor became UNITE HERE President, the ground-game effort led by the members of UNITE HERE has helped deliver two Senate seats for the Democrats: In 2016 for Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto, the first Latina in the U.S. Senate, and in 2018 for former Culinary Union member Senator Jacky Rosen. With Nevada’s electoral votes consistently being delivered for Democrats in the presidency, UNITE HERE’s Culinary Union has become known as a “kingmaker” in the state’s politics. 

In 2020—despite pandemic setbacks—the Union led the largest labor canvassing efforts nationwide in key battleground states for the 2020 federal elections. UNITE HERE knocked on 3 million doors in Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania during the 2020 presidential election, and more than 1.6 million doors in Georgia during the Senate runoffs to secure a Democratic majority in the Senate and victories for the Biden/Harris ticket. In 2022 under Taylor’s leadership, the Union’s ambitious field program secured wins for Democrats in four key battleground Senate races, landing the Democrats a Majority plus one and defeating a so-called Republican “Red Wave” that was projected by the political class. 

Amid attacks on immigrants from the Trump administration, Taylor pushed UNITE HERE to intensify its advocacy for immigrant workers with efforts to protect millions of working people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or DACA. Taylor is a leader in the movement on the belief that comprehensive immigration reform is critical to the American economy and improving working conditions for people in the hospitality industry and beyond.  

Taylor has also spurred efforts to advance Black union leaders and other leaders of color in keeping with the Union’s longstanding commitment to civil rights and racial justice, including providing support to the UNITE HERE leaders who formed the Black Leadership Group in 2013 amid national uprisings after Michael Brown’s murder.   

Following his retirement as UNITE HERE President, D. Taylor will continue to serve as Chair of UNITE HERE Health and continue to support the union in the gaming industry. Ahead of UNITE HERE’s constitutional convention in June, Secretary-Treasurer Gwen Mills will succeed Taylor as the first-ever woman in the Union’s history to be elected International Union President, effective April 1. Mills has served as UNITE HERE Secretary-Treasurer since 2017 and previously as UNITE HERE’s Political Director.

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