Striking teachers unions are not the only sector of organized labor flexing long-dormant muscles these days. The SEIU, the country’s second-largest individual labor union, and the largest of non-educators, has quietly racked up a score of political victories in recent years. Quietly, that is, if you’re not in the fast food, airline, hospital or Democratic campaign businesses.
These wins have not directly expanded the union’s membership or been purely for the benefit of its own workers, but rather, major political wins bringing better wages, more healthcare and more power to working people of all stripes.
Fighting for higher wages, more unions and democratic power
Starting in 2012, the SEIU partnered with local organizers at Communities for Change in New York, an economic justice group, to launch the Fight for $15 campaign. Organizing fast food and airline workers, SEIU HQ and its various locals turned the screws on various businesses and public officials to get behind a much higher minimum wage. With Sen. Bernie Sanders ascending as the sole challenger to Hillary Clinton in 2016, a $15 per hour wage became a major fissure between establishment Democrats and their progressive challengers.
Fight for $15 is now ensconced in the Democratic Party platform and has been passed into law in dozens of states and cities.
It helps the SEIU cause that the union has stepped up to become one of the largest union funders of Democratic politics. The union and its affiliates backed Democrats to the tune of $11 million in 2016, $14 million in the 2018 midterms, and more than $20 million in 2020, according to Open Secrets.
Money like that can be persuasive: In 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025.
SEIU has also worked to incubate independent political groups. One of these groups is BlackPAC, which focuses on turning out Black voters through polling, canvassing and pushing candidates on issues important to the Black community. BlackPAC is run by Adrianne Shropshire, a former SEIU consultant.
California healthcare workers win big
Perhaps the SEIU’s most politically active local is United Healthcare Workers West (UHW), which represents 100,000 workers in California. UHW’s outside work includes the Let’s Get Healthy California campaign, where the union partnered with then-Governor Jerry Brown to form a state task force focused on lower healthcare costs and expanding care for chronic diseases. Part of UHW’s campaign to expand quality care also meant suing the state of California over the shortcomings of its Medicaid program, alleging discrimination against the state’s disproportionately Latino Medicaid population.
“We’ve been spending a lot of time thinking ‘what is a union in the year 2020 versus what is a union in 1960?’” UHW spokesman Steve Trossman recently told Blue Tent. “Our local union is really unique in that we’ve always believed that in order for the union to succeed, we’ve had to work in the public interest.”
The most ambitious of UHW’s public interest efforts, and perhaps the most successful political program launched by a union in many years, is the Fairness Project.
Founded in 2015 with $5 million from UHW, the Fairness Project helps to build and support campaigns for state and municipal ballot initiatives that benefit working people. The brainchild of Trossman UHW President Dave Regan, the Fairness Project has provided startup funding, signature gathering and other guidance to campaigns across the country asking voters to raise the minimum wage, expand Medicaid, guarantee paid leave and regulate payday lending.
“Where we give most of our money is early,” Trossman, who also serves as chair of the board at Fairness Project, told Blue Tent. “We’ve seen a lot of campaigns where the campaign went down because the signatures just weren’t there.”
This hasn’t been the case for the Fairness Project. Of the 21 ballot measures that the group has supported, 20 were approved at the polls. The group’s only loss came in their attempt to expand Medicaid in Montana, where the state legislature later passed an expansion anyway.
In 2020, SEIU UHW also spent millions backing Prop 23 in California, which would have tightened regulations and rules around dialysis clinics, where SEIU has been trying to organize unions for years. A similar measure was on the California ballot in 2018; both failed after major dialysis corporations spent over $100 million in opposition.
Future fights
So what’s next for the SEIU’s massive political operation?
Having proven the power of popular referenda to quickly advance progressive goals, UHW is doubling down. Last year, the union launched Rising Healthcare Arizona, a grassroots group pushing a ballot initiative to protect people with pre-existing conditions, ban surprise billing, increase penalties for hospital-acquired infections, and give healthcare workers an annual raise. Back in their home state, UHW has built a wing of healthcare justice organizers and backed a ballot measure to reform the heavily monopolized dialysis industry.
Trossman told Blue Tent that progressive leaders across the country are requesting help from the Fairness Project, including on potentially groundbreaking new ideas: Municipalities looking to restructure and potentially defund their police departments are looking to get the ball rolling through popular referenda.
The Fairness Project also hopes to expand its work on payday loans and continue to bring minimum wage raises to the ballot in other states. The international union and SEIU locals will undoubtedly continue to spend big supporting Democratic leaders, while their money will also give their top brass a seat at the table with what is sure to be a more labor-friendly Biden Administration.
