SEIU Annual Report

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SEIU Healthcare The year 2009 was a year of progress on two fundamental goals for SEIU Healthcare members: winning affordable, guaranteed healthcare for every American and building a stronger national union for healthcare workers. • Standing up for quality, affordable healthcare. In our local communities and in Washington, D.C., SEIU Healthcare members took on the corporate special interests that tried to block healthcare reform. In memory of a brother who died after he couldn’t get access to affordable cardiac care, SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania member Georgeanne Koehler delivered nearly a thousand postcards she collected to urge Congress to pass reform. Loretta Johnson, an SEIU member and home care worker from Virginia, spoke at the press conference when Sen. Harry Reid (Nev.) introduced the historic healthcare bill, speaking about her and her husband’s struggle to get affordable healthcare coverage. Linda Bock, a registered nurse and member of SEIU 1199UHE in Maryland, participated in an online town hall on reform convened by President Obama. Thousands of SEIU Healthcare members signed scrub tops through a campaign with the Partnership for Quality Care that were delivered to members of Congress and thousands more made phone calls or sent e-mails to their representatives to urge them to take action. • Breakthrough in Massachusetts. Hospital workers in Massachusetts started the year by winning a historic agreement with Caritas Christi Healthcare—a Catholicsponsored hospital system—to hold free and fair elections to organize a union. By the end of 2009, more than 3,000 Caritas Christi workers had voted to join SEIU 1199UHE and approve contracts that raised pay and provided access to training and opportunity programs. Member Strength The Member Strength Program in 2009 focused on three main areas: Shifting the union’s essential but noncore functions to the Member Action Service Center. • SEIU launched its state-of-the-art Member Action Service Center in Redford, Mich. This comprehensive shared service operation offers locals strong dues processing, accounting and financial services, a fully integrated member information system, and a responsive Member Action Center (MAC). Local 615 joined the center in 2009. Additional locals will join in 2010. To allow local unions to focus on SEIU’s Justice for All goals, including developing 10 percent of our members as leaders and having half of our members active in the union by 2012. • Based on the recommendations of SEIU’s Local Strength Committee, the Member Strength Program works with locals to maximize their ability to unite more workers, build a pro-worker political majority, and increase opportunities for members to win at work. By locals transitioning to new relationships with members, with assistance from Member Strength and Institute for Change, resulting in greater member leadership in organizing, politics and bargaining. Making the case for change to staff and members that building deeper member engagement and expanding our pool of member leaders is vital to winning Justice for All. Reorganizing field and field supervisors’ work so organizers engage members on a wider and deeper level, and learn to identify, recruit and develop member leaders to assume greater responsibility around organizing, bargaining and politics. Encouraging new ideas through the Innovation Leaders Group (ILG), a collaborative learning community where local Member Strength directors and staff can design, execute, track and evaluate member strength experiments. Exciting projects include Local 1000’s project to conduct 13,500 individual member relationship-building meetings, and 32BJ’s activitybased point system for tracking and rewarding steward engagement. Such experiments help locals match members to roles and identify potential leaders who can mobilize others. Retraining leadership teams, executive boards, organizing staff, and Member Strength directors for the work of the new union. Measuring member engagement to establish a system to track, measure and assess member engagement and leadership levels—essential for measuring member strength progress over time, engaging additional members and identifying and developing potential member leaders. 6 15
Global Strength and Partnerships Through the establishment of the Change to Win Organizing Center in Amsterdam, SEIU and Change to Win worked with major European unions—in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom and other nations—to help them develop their organizing and campaign capacity in healthcare, retail and property services. In 2009, our global team also: • Opened an SEIU office in Mexico City. Nearly a quartermillion of SEIU’s members are from Mexico; sending nearly $200 million to Mexico each year. We began working with independent unions, NGOs and civil society organizations to lay the groundwork for a campaign to raise standards for janitors in Mexico City. • Helped implement the 2008 global agreement between security giant G4S, the second-largest employer in the world (and the parent company of U.S.-based Wackenhut), and workers in India, South Africa, Mozambique and Malawi. In India, 150,000 G4S employees engaged in national bargaining for the first time. In Malawi, 13,000 workers received a 20 percent pay increase after the successful conclusion of the case against G4S. 14 • Worked with French and British unions in support of Sodexo and other multiservices workers. Organizers from a number of SEIU local unions are working with the British union UNISON to help launch its first campaign in the contract catering industry. • Participated in the signing of a memorandum to facilitate exchanges, share strategies and expand cooperation between Change to Win and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which represents 100 million workers. • Brought together 30 organizations to advocate for enforcement of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinationals. The guidelines establish rules of conduct in the areas of labor and human rights and the environment but have been almost completely ignored by the U.S. government. • Continued to work with global union federations, including hosting the 2009 annual meeting of UNI Property Services. • A new voice for quality home care in the “Show Me State.” Home care workers in Missouri voted to form a new union for the 13,000 personal care attendants in the state. Anti-worker special interests have tied up their victory in a legal dispute, but workers are determined to win a better future for the people in their care. • Las Vegas Addus home care workers unite. In February, SEIU members at Addus HealthCare renewed our national agreement with the company, paving the way for improving jobs for caregivers and giving Addus personal care attendants in Las Vegas the freedom to unite with SEIU Healthcare. • Re-engaging members and improving jobs in California. The unity of the 150,000 members of UHW- West helped them secure contracts that nearly double the national average, despite California’s troubled economy. They settled contracts at 68 facilities, with an average wage increase of 4.3 percent—far exceeding the 2.3 percent average first-year wage increase. Home care workers from UHW, ULTCW and Local 521 united to fight back against massive cutbacks to home care services, protecting some of California’s most vulnerable residents. • Making gains for healthcare workers in Canada. In Ontario, 3,500 Red Cross home care workers who are members of SEIU Local 1 Canada won a major victory when the first provincewide strike in Canadian history helped introduce paid travel time. In Quebec, members of Local 298 helped unite 350 new paramedics with SEIU. This led to the formation of a new local union, SEIU Local 592, representing paramedics. 7
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