How can I efficiently organize by UI in the hierarchy?

I am developing a game menu with several sets of UI elements that are roughly arranged in several columns. I think the organization within the scene hierarchy would be cleaner and easier to modify if each column was made the child of an empty game object. The idea being is I could then adjust the position of one of the columns by modifying the transform of a single object.

The problem is, most game objects use a transform that works different than the transform used by UI elements. What I really is some kind of empty UI element to group each set of functional UI elements under. Multiple canvases would be the obvious candidate except I do not have any control over the canvas transform using the default canvas settings. There just doesn't seem to be any blank UI objects that I can use for this purpose.

Is there a UI element meant to be used for this particular purpose?

Thanks for the help.

 

I was not aware you could do that. This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the help.

 

You can also use a Panel and disable the image component (which would make it an empty GO with a Rect transform) ;-)

 

This is just what I do every time. It's a lot easier.

 

you can just right click on the UI gameobject and then click Create Empty. It'll automatically create a GameObject with RectTransform