We are at a critical juncture for the progressive movement

Although we are confronting a deep economic crisis, with renewed political will we have the potential to win labor, immigration, healthcare and human rights reforms that could have ramifications for working families here in the United States and around the world.

At this time, however, Andy Stern and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have been dividing the progressive labor movement by jeopardizing the organizing efforts of UNITE HERE members in the United States. UNITE HERE, the union of hotel, food service, gaming and laundry workers in North America, asks scholars to act in solidarity with its members by signing a letter calling on SEIU to end its interference with UNITE HERE and refocus its energies on securing tangible gains for healthcare workers and janitors who don't yet have the benefit of a union job.

Click here to see the signers to the letter.

about SEIU’s Interference with UNITE HERE

Service Employees International Union
1800 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Dear SEIU Executive Board members,

We write to you as scholars and activists with a deep commitment to studying and supporting the labor movement, a commitment which stems from our knowledge that workers can aspire to and achieve a decent standard of living through unionization. This understanding has led many of us to support SEIU and its local unions in the past. Sharing SEIU's progressive ideals, many of us have marched with its janitors, security officers, and nursing home workers. Many of us have also stood in solidarity with UNITE HERE's hotel and gaming workers, food service workers and laundry workers.

Right now we are at a critical historical juncture. Working people and their families are bearing the brunt of the worst economic crisis we have seen in decades. But historically, with crisis has come opportunity to create lasting change. As we all experienced through Barack Obama's presidential victory, which SEIU helped achieve, the current moment is no exception. Though it is a difficult time, it is also one of great potential, marked by a renewed collective political will to win reforms in health care, labor law, and immigrant rights.

It is deeply troubling, then, to witness a leading labor organization like SEIU choose a path that is so at odds with its worthy tradition. SEIU's concerted efforts to undermine UNITE HERE belie the progressive ideals SEIU has upheld for decades and ignore its own past and rightful insistence that unions need to organize the unorganized, not engage in destructive raiding of existing unions. The attempts to discredit UNITE HERE leaders, to lure workers out of UNITE HERE and into SEIU, and to interfere in the constitutional process of UNITE HERE will not help the cause of democratic unionism or progressive reform. On the contrary, we are concerned that these actions are undermining the principle of union democracy and dividing the progressive movement at a critical moment in history.

We urge you to stop your interference in UNITE HERE, refocus SEIU's energy on organizing the millions of unorganized workers, and engage collaboratively with other progressive unions and community supporters so that together we can effectively challenge the vast inequalities and hardships which face our nation's working families.

Sincerely,

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Click here to see the signers to the letter.

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