Labor Briefing

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10 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2017 Good News, Bad News From SEIU—In recent years, this paper has often had good news to report about the two-million member Service Employees International Union. They have played an exemplary role in champi­ oning long neglected low-wage workers.

The Fight for $15 and a Union has become the most important and inspiring class struggle effort in the USA. Beginning with Fast Food workers, it has come to em­ brace airport service workers, home-care employees, ad­ junct professors, and child-care workers. They have car­ ried out one-day strikes along with marches, rallies, and civil disobedience actions that have attracted wide soli­ darity by other unions and working-class communities. These efforts have now won union recognition, and some first contracts, for thousands of workers. The Fac­ ulty Forward “partner” of SEIU has won recognition for adjunct faculty on 20 campuses. Recently, SEIU Local 32BJ negotiated a first contract covering 8000 baggage handlers, airport security officers, wheelchair attendants, skycaps, cabin cleaners, and terminal cleaners at JFK and LaGuardia airports in New York and Newark Liberty In­ ternational Airport in New Jersey.

While this contract was a victory it is also an example of the complexity of such bargaining. Wage rates had already been set in negotiations that began nearly five years ago with the Port Authority of New York-New Jer­ sey, which manages the three airports. It was designed to work in lock-step with the fight for boosting state mini­ mum wages in stages to $15. That was accomplished in New York and was passed by the New Jersey legislature. But New Jersey Governor Christy refused to sign it and instructed his appointees to the Port Authority to insist behind those east of the Hudson River. That fight continues.

In coalitions with others, SEIU has been in the forefront of winning increases in state and local minimum wage laws boosting pay for millions. A year-end report from the National Employment Law Project stated, “When combined with increases approved in recent years, on New Year’s Day 2017, workers in at least 41 states, cities and counties will receive raises—followed later in 2017 by raises for workers in another 21 states and cities.” Even the boss-backed American Enterprise Institute ac­ knowledges these advances in the minimum wage are the biggest component of the minuscule national increase in wages.

Of course, these new minimums are uneven. Even the $15 goal is five dollars less than the average blue-collar wage. But it’s more than double the current federal mini­ mum, and full-time at $15 can provide a modest living rather than poverty. And if the $15 is included in a union contract there can be a path to further improvement. But it’s not just low-wage workers who have money problems, and that’s where the bad news from SEIU comes in. A Dec. 28 article in the London Guardian about an internal union memo they had obtained was titled “SEIU, one of the largest US unions, plans 30% budget cuts in wake of Trump win.”

The union’s concerns are not paranoid. While the Obama administration was certainly no faithful friend of labor, Trump’s nominee for Labor Secretary is a Fast Food CEO, with a personal interest in smashing the Fight for 15 as well as being a class enemy of all unions. There is also a serious threat of the new Congress’ enacting a national “Right to Work Law” banning union shop con­ tracts, which would result in some lost dues revenue. SEIU was undoubtedly already feeling a financial

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C labour-based New Democratic Party of Canada. onditions are ripe for a socialist leader of the website: http://socialistaction.ca