WASHINGTON—After almost 20 years officially on the outside, the gigantic Service Employees are formally bringing their two million members back into the AFL-CIO. The result is a larger, more unified labor movement materializing just before the anti-labor Trump administration takes hold in Washington.
The January 8 joint announcement by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and new SEIU President April Verrett culminates months, if not years, of unofficial cooperation, however, especially in political action, between SEIU and the federation, which now has more than 13 million members in 60 unions.
The latest precursor of SEIU’s return surfaced in last year’s election campaign. Verrett joined Shuler and the presidents of the AFL-CIO’s two largest unions—-Randi Weingarten of the Teachers and Lee Saunders of AFSCME–to hit the hustings for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. AFT has 1.8 million members and AFSCME has almost as many.
Those unions, plus the labor federation as a whole, backed Harris. So did the nation’s largest union, the independent three-million-member National Education Association. Its president, Becky Pringle, joined the campaign caravans, too.
The federation and SEIU announced SEIU’s return in a late-night statement on MSNBC’s Joy Reid show, after their boards ratified it. They are officially unveiling it at an afternoon roundtable discussion with workers today, January 9, on January 9 at the federation’s Martin Luther King Jr. conference in Austin, Texas.
Shuler and Verrett did not say the timing of SEIU’s return had anything to do with a joint front to battle the looming threat of the incoming white-male-nationalist-based Republican Trump administration. But their joint press release declared SEIU’s return occurs “at a critical moment when everything is on the line” for workers. And Shuler declared that “We are amassing our forces, building our strength and our power before the inauguration. Working people will continue to demand that our voices be heard.”
The overall explanation continued: “The labor movement is uniting to challenge the status quo and build a movement of workers who will fight—on the job, in the streets, at the ballot box, in our communities—for higher pay, expanded benefits and new rules that empower them to join together in unions and organize across industries.”
“Workers know it’s better in a union, and together we are stronger in our organizing and bargaining fights because there is power in unity,” said Shuler. “CEOs and billionaires want nothing more than to see workers divided, but we’re standing here today with greater solidarity than ever to reach the 60 million Americans who say they’d join a union tomorrow if the laws allowed and to un-rig our labor laws to guarantee every worker in America the basic right to organize on the job.”
Although the NEA is still independent, it largely cooperates with the AFL-CIO and even has joint AFT-NEA statewide affiliates in New York, Minnesota and Florida. The Teamsters, who are also independent, sat out last year’s U.S. presidential campaign. So are the Carpenters and several smaller unions.
SEIU’s Verrett said her union’s “members are ready to unleash a new era of worker power, as millions of service and care workers unite with workers at the AFL-CIO to build our unions in every industry and every zip code.
Organizing work places
“Working people have been organizing our workplaces and communities to build a stronger economy and democracy. We are ready to stand up to union-busters at corporations and in government and rewrite the outdated, sexist, racist labor laws that hold us all back. We’re so proud to join together… to redouble our commitment to building a thriving, healthy future for working people.”
In yet another criticism of the corporate class and its oppression of workers, the joint statement noted: “Millions of workers are doubling down on a vision to fundamentally transform our lives. Workers want to join unions because they know that pay is too low and grocery bills are too high. Child care costs as much as rent, which also costs more than it should. Everything workers need to live is just one more chance for corporations to profit from them.”
AFSCME President Lee Saunders welcomed “ally and partner” SEIU’s return to the AFL-CIO.
“This is a momentous development for the labor movement and all working people–especially at a time when billionaires and anti-union extremists will test our strength and solidarity. Workers across the country are hungry for the freedom to join a union and to have a fair shot at the American Dream. Together, we will fight to usher in a new era of union power and solidarity,” he added.
But a noticeable silence came from the Teamsters. Its then-President Jim Hoffa joined the Andy Stern-led SEIU in walking out of the AFL-CIO’s mid-year Chicago convention in 2005. They took several other unions with them into their own organization, Change To Win. It later atrophied.
This past election year, the Teamsters split off again. They endorsed neither Harris nor Trump, though big Teamsters councils on the West Coast, the Midwest, and its largest local, in New York, backed Harris. So, individually, did Hoffa. His critic and successor, Sean O’Brien, addressed the Republican National Convention, at Trump’s invitation.
The stated reason for the 2005 split, which also included the Carpenters, the United Farm Workers and several other smaller unions, was over what the departing unions criticized as the AFL-CIO’s Washington-centric, lobbying-based inside-baseball focus. They claimed they wanted to pump more money into organizing.
Ironically, that’s what AFL-CIO unions have been doing with increasing success and despite vicious and occasionally violent corporate opposition. Unions are making inroads in the anti-union South and organizing in new industries, from the Starbucks coffee chain to high-tech firms.
What will now be the AFL-CIO’s three biggest unions—SEIU, AFT and AFSCME in that order—are majority-female, as is NEA. SEIU and AFSCME. The unions involved have large numbers of workers of color, making the labor movement into a force that benefits from the diversity and experiences of its membership.
NEA’s President Pringle, AFSCME’s President Saunders and SEIU’s President Verrett are African-American. Verrett succeeded a white woman, Mary Kay Henry. Shuler, Pringle and AFT’s Weingarten are women. In short, “It’s not your father’s—or your grandfather’s—labor movement any more,” as Shuler once said.
That’s important, too. When SEIU, the Teamsters and the others left the federation, the top leaders involved—SEIU’s Stern and the Teamsters’ Hoffa versus then-AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney and then Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka—were all white men and all at loggerheads over priorities, dues and other issues.
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