New SEIU state director impressed by Oregon

Oregon’s labor movement is getting a national reputation. At her post in the Washington, D.C., office of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Megan Sweeney developed the impression that SEIU and labor in general in Oregon were more effective, more organized and more involved in politics than in many other states. So in November, she accepted a job as executive director of Oregon State Council of the SEIU.

[Sweeney, 31, is no relation to John Sweeney, the former SEIU president who now heads the national AFL-CIO.]

Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Sweeney became interested in the labor movement when as a student at Macalester College in Minnesota, a labor history professor inspired her to take part in the fight against NAFTA. After college, she got a job as an organizer with an amalgamated Cleveland SEIU local, and worked for several years bringing public employees and nursing home workers into the union. She later went back to school for a masters’ degree in public administration at Syracuse University, and worked as a researcher at the SEIU international.

Sweeney says her highest priority this year is mobilizing members to defeat President George W. Bush’s campaign for re-election.

“We’re really worried about getting a pro-labor president, and Oregon is definitely a battleground state,” Sweeney said.

“Also, with the state budget cuts, the attacks on PERS, and attacks on funding for public services, we really have our fight cut out for us,” Sweeney said. “Health care is a big issue too. We want to increase member involvement in these fights.”

Sweeney’s predecessor, Arthur Towers, left the position after three-and-a-half years to take the job of political director at Oregon Public Employees, SEIU Local 503. Towers, too, had come to Oregon from elsewhere: He was SEIU state council director for Missouri.

Before Towers, the SEIU State Council executive director was Tim Nesbitt, now president of the Oregon AFL-CIO.

SEIU represents workers in three sectors: public employees, janitors, and health care workers. Its state council coordinates political efforts representing all the union’s constituencies and the interests of working people as a whole.

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