SEIU won't allow Fight for $15 (and a Union) employees to join SEIU's own staff union, and may have violated its contract with that staff union, according to an International Business Times report.
A small group of Fight for $15 organizers are demanding to join SEIU's own staff union, the UUR, arguing that despite SEIU sometimes describing the campaign as a separate entity, workers on it are effectively SEIU employees who should have representation of their own. SEIU did not respond to IBT's request for comment.
Some California SEIU members are voting again on decertification, after SEIU used a technicality (ballots mailed four days early) to overturn the last decertification vote, which the union lost by more than 16 points — per the Fresno Bee.
Organizers say members are unhappy with the larger union's involvement in social-justice protests and minimum-wage campaigns outside their area, and that support for breaking away exists in other SEIU units as well.
A strike by SEIU-affiliated bus drivers in Hartford, Connecticut left thousands of school children without transportation, according to Eyewitness News coverage cited on the site.
About 2,100 K-8 students were absent that day (roughly 15% of the district), one school had to close, and a pregnant mother described having to walk her son to school. The bus company accused the union of putting its own agenda ahead of student safety.
A Washington State activist alleges roughly 1,600 people voted illegally in SeaTac's $15 minimum-wage referendum, claiming many were registered by SEIU 775 and wrongly told citizenship wasn't required — per KPQ. SEIU 775 said it had to register a young, immigrant population to make the vote competitive. SeaTac was the first U.S. municipality to pass a $15 minimum wage, in 2013.
Santa Clara County underpaid SEIU Local 521 social workers for years of overtime. Rather than pay each worker what they were individually owed (some over $100,000), the county and union agreed to split a $3.2 million settlement evenly — about $2,900 per person — prompting dozens of workers to sue both the county and their own union, according to the Monterey Herald. Their attorney said the union's position "makes no sense to anyone," suggesting SEIU wanted to spread the money across all members instead of paying individuals what they'd actually earned.
SEIU locals 32BJ, 1199 and the CWA joined a labor-environmental coalition pushing New York's Climate and Community Protection Act, which the site argues would raise electricity costs and reduce reliability, per WHAV.
Over half the members of a 314-person SEIU Local 521 classified-employee unit in Morgan Hill, CA signed a decertification petition within two days, led by the local's former chief steward, who said the unit pays roughly $130,000/year in dues to the San Jose office but gets little representation in return — according to the Morgan Hill Times. The unit would remain independent for a year before seeking new representation.
Fight for $15 protesters admitted on camera that they work for SEIU, not McDonald's, according to The Blaze.
SEIU declined to renegotiate with Connecticut despite falling state revenues; hundreds of state employees were laid off, with the governor projecting the total could exceed two thousand, per Fox 61.
Illinois legislation (SB 2931) would require home caregivers of disabled adults to attend annual in-person training — but parents who attended a 2014 session say it felt like a union recruitment drive rather than actual training, according to the Chicago Tribune. One parent, Debra Lewis, said pulling caregivers away from round-the-clock duties for a membership pitch felt like "the greed and power this union has." Under SEIU's now-expired state contract, the union received 30 minutes of a mandatory training session for recruitment purposes.
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