Service Employees International Union (SEIU), America’s second largest union, is rejoining the AFL-CIO, adding more than 1.8 million members to the labor federation’s existing 13 million affiliated members.
“This is a big deal,” said President Joe Biden in a White House press statement.
“We are welcoming SEIU into the AFL-CIO with all our hearts and all our joy,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler Jan. 9 at a live-streamed “Power in Unity” event in Austin, Texas. “Two million service and care workers, janitors, home care workers, doctors, fast food workers, baristas, security officers, school workers, nurses, government workers, and a lot more, are joining our family, bringing us to nearly 15 million workers strong.”
“We’re gonna build a younger, fresher, hipper, gym-shoe-wearing, swaggier, most inclusive labor movement you’ve ever seen,” said SEIU International President April Verrett just ahead of Shuler.
Verrett was elected SEIU’s national leader at the union’s May 2024 convention, but discussions about re-affiliation had already begun under her predecessor Mary Kay Henry. The executive boards of SEIU and the AFL-CIO each unanimously approved the re-affiliation on Jan. 8.
SEIU has about 1,845,500 members. SEIU had been an affiliate of the AFL-CIO since the labor federation was formed in 1955, but it left along with several other unions in 2005 and formed a separate coalition called Change to Win. Change to Win was later renamed the Strategic Organizing Center. The Strategic Organizing Center will continue to assist organizing campaigns, as it has with union efforts at Starbucks, Microsoft, and in fast food, an SEIU spokesperson told the Labor Press via email.As to whether SEIU locals will also affiliate with state and local AFL-CIO bodies, a spokesperson for the national AFL-CIO said that will be a democratic decision made at the local level and may vary by state and local. SEIU Local 503 had already just the month before affiliated with the Oregon AFL-CIO.
