A long-delayed, controversial merger between the Sheet Metal Workers and United Transportation Union is dead, a UTU official announced.

“There will not be a merger today. There will not be a merger tomorrow. There will never be a merger with the Sheet Metal Workers,” UTU President Mike Futhey told attendees of a July 8 meeting in San Francisco. The announcement was posted on the union’s Web site.

Plans to combine the two unions fell apart last year when a group of transportation union members filed a federal lawsuit to stop the merger, claiming they were not made aware of potential problems between the two unions’ constitutions before their vote. UTU members and Sheet Metal Workers officials had OK’d the merger in 2007.

The new union was to have been called the International Association of Sheet Metal, Rail and Transportation Workers.