The staff of the Local 2015 chapter of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has gone on strike against the union over failed contract negotiations regarding wage scales and healthcare costs, leading some to question the sincerity of the union’s pitch to workers who are not yet organized.
One of the SEIU’s largest chapters in California, Local 2015, represents well over 400,000 workers. The chapter’s staff organized in 2021 and became members of their own union, Chapter 15 of the Pacific Northwest Staff Union.
With a vote of 95% of its membership, the staff authorized a strike from its work with SEIU Local 2015 in October. After more weeks without progress on their contract issues, a strike officially began on November 1, pitting union against union.
The 130-member union staff initially formed picket lines in Sacramento and Los Angeles, and shared a flyer to publicize the event that read, “Our employer, SEIU Local 2015 (yes, a union) has committed multiple unfair labor practices and we are striking against them!”
Things quickly turned sour as SEIU management reportedly engaged in bullying tactics long maligned by unions in dispute with their employers.
For example, a SEIU manager allegedly drove a pickup truck through the union staff’s Los Angeles picket line, injuring Alex Sanchez, an organizer of the staff union’s strike.
A tweet with footage of the event read, “This is how [SEIU] management treats its staff! They drove their car into us at the strike line.”
Sanchez retweeted the video and wrote, “She hit me and I rode the hood. One slip and I would’ve went under.”
This is not the first time the second-largest union in the United States has been accused of hypocrisy in the way it treats its own workers, damaging its credibility with unorganized workers.
In 2019, the staff at SEIU’s Washington D.C. headquarters leveled several accusations against the union, including the outsourcing of union jobs, elimination of work for union staff, and the misclassification of their own employees.
Staff hung a banner outside the headquarters that read, “Stop Union Busting,” while one employee entered the building with a bullhorn and orchestrated a walk-out.
While the union fights for lucrative benefits and protections for its dues-paying members, incredibly, many union staff are employed at-will, which means they may be terminated at any time and for any reason by the union.
This has caused the rise of the unionization of union staff.
Over the last few years, SEIU targeted and villainized Starbucks, actively working to create a movement within the company to organize and unionize its employees.
The union has even put out a call-to-action form for sympathetic individuals to support the union efforts within Starbucks, emblazoned with the title, “We See You Starbucks: Stop These Brazen Union-Busting Tactics!”
In a recent interview, SEIU president Mary Kay Henry rebuked Starbucks, claiming that the company would rather fight “tooth and nail” against unionization than sit down and negotiate with its employees.
Yet with Local 2015 in California and the union’s D.C. headquarters staff in 2019, the SEIU finds itself having more in common with its portrayal of Starbucks than its espoused vision for employer-employee relations.
In fact, the D.C. staff’s union, Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 2, pleaded with SEIU union bosses at the time to “practice what they preach.”
According to reports, SEIU spokesperson Terry Carter wrote that SEIU Local 2015 is “committed to bargaining in good faith with our staff’s union;” however, Carter did not comment on the allegations of dangerous conduct by their management towards union staff picket lines.
These incidents have caused some commentators to question how workers can be persuaded to unionize when the unions courting them to organize appear to be so openly hostile toward their own unionized employees.
In a piece entitled “When a Union Busts a Union” for the Wall Street Journal, authors Michael Saltsman and Charlyce Bozzello wrote, “Labor unions are employers too. And they don’t mind flipping the script when it’s their own staff at the bargaining table.”
Republican Party of Texas State Chairman Matt Rinaldi commented by email on this story, stating, “The SEIU strike highlights the hypocrisy of unions.”
“They advocate for the unionization and forced dues payments of workers who do not want to participate in union activities, then commit the very unfair labor practices in which they accuse their members’ employers of participating,” Rinaldi concluded.
Rinaldi remarked that without pressure or coercion, only 5% of workers in Texas choose unions, and instances like these will not change that.
With the ongoing issues of the staff of Local 2015 with their union employer, and the treatment of staff by the union, the pitch unions make to unorganized workers rings hollow.
“We’re a labor organization. We preach solidarity and worker power, and empowerment and development of workers,” Sanchez said. “[Local 2015 management] is doing the exact same thing that our members’ employers are.”