Radicalized through student activism and the civil rights movement, Raynor began his work in the labor movement in 1973 in the education department of the former Textile Workers Union of America. He was involved in a multi-year campaign to organize the Southern textile company J.P. Stevens, which was dramatized in the 1979 film
Norma Rae. This was a
comprehensive campaign that was innovative in its use of community- and church-based organizing. Based in Atlanta, he went on to organize tens of thousands of workers in the South, including nearly 1,000 Lichtenberg Curtain and Drapery workers in Georgia, 500 shirt workers in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, 3,200 Tultex workers in Martinsville, Virginia, and the giant
Cannon Mills complex in Kannapolis, North Carolina. He eventually became the elected leader of 50,000 Southern clothing and textile workers. Raynor has collective bargaining relationships with companies including Levi Strauss & Co., Liz Claiborne, T.J. Maxx/Marshall's, the Hartmarx Group, Xerox, Delaware North, Hilton, Starwood, and national food service and laundry industry employers such as Aramark, Compass and Sodexo. Raynor is a graduate of the
Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (class of '72) where he gave up a biochemistry scholarship to pursue a career in the labor movement. In 2009, Raynor resigned as president of UNITE HERE and became president of
Workers United. Representing 150,000 workers, some of whom had voted to leave UNITE HERE, this new union included the majority of former UNITE members, some former members of HERE, and a number of workers who had been organized since the merger. Many of these members returned to UNITE HERE after a drawn out dispute with SEIU was settled. Workers United affiliated with
SEIU and Raynor was elected to the additional position of executive vice president of SEIU. After two years of service, Raynor resigned from his positions at Workers United and its parent union, SEIU. ==Family==