UNITE HERE will officially announce it is pulling out of the AFL-CIO on Wednesday. Yesterday, I spoke with a senior UNITE HERE official who confirmed that a press statement will be released following an official vote of the union’s full executive board on Tuesday. The first step will come today when the Executive Committee convenes prior to the full board vote. The board is meeting in Minneapolis.

This is no surprise. It was just a matter of time before the union pulled out. Bruce Raynor and John Wilhelm, the top two officers of UNITE HERE, have been the most vocal critics of the AFL-CIO from the beginning of the debate about the future of labor.

The pull-out will come less than two weeks from the founding convention of the Change To Win coalition in St. Louis.

So, this pull-out only adds a bit more of a headache from the number-crunchers at 16th Street. On top of the budget cuts already needed to close a $25 million hole created by the pull-out of SEIU, the Teamsters and the UFCW, UNITE HERE’s departure means $3 million less in income (I’m using the 2003 per capita tax figures that I have so it might be a a little less). That’s cutting more than 20 percent out of a projected income of $126 million.

Sharpen those pencils–and those axes…