Read more
"This project examines the Service Employee International Union (SEIU), long considered the best hope of a future for American organized labor. A union that has catered to a diverse body of workers outside the traditional factory-industrial stream--service workers, domestic workers, immigrant workers--the SEIU has developed particular strategies and tactics and built connections between U.S. and non-U.S. workers to create a vibrant source of agency for historically unrepresented or under-represented members of the workforce. This volume aims to provide a multifaceted examination of the SEIU's innovative organizing strategies, its international reach, its place in the wider labor movement, and its potential impact in the midst of the worst economic downtown since the Great Depression. The volume analyzes the recent history of the SEIU from the development of its famous J4J (Justice for Janitors) model, through its gains in the health care sector and its breakaway from the AFl-CIO, to its most recent controversies with the UNITE-HERE merger and its solidarities with migrant communities across the United States and Canada. Contributors consider openings and opportunities the current economic crisis is creating for organized labour and especially the SEIU; how the SEIU is reinventing itself to adapt to workers' needs; what role the SEIU plays in allying with community organizations to enable improvements in citizens' social and living conditions; the extent to which the SEIU is addressing contemporary challenges in a reasonable, productive, and progressive way; and how its diversity marks this union for progressive change for the twenty-first century. Chartered in 1921, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a worldwide organization that represents more than two million workers in occupations from healthcare and government service to custodians and taxi drivers. Women form more than half the membership while people in minority groups make up approximately forty percent"--
List of contents
Acknowledgments 1 Seeing Purple: An Introduction to the History and Global Significance of SEIU
Joseph A. McCartin and Luís LM AguiarPart I. Dynamics of Growth and Transformation
2 From Flats to the White House: A Brief History of SEIU, 1910-2010
Benjamin L. Peterson 3 Reconciling Progressive Idealism with Centralized Control: An Institutional Analysis of SEIU’s Growth
Kyoung-Hee Yu 4 Becoming Purple: Organizational Change at SEIU During the Andy Stern Years
Adrienne E. Eaton, Janice Fine, and Allison Porter Part II. Developing the Organizing Model 5 Persistence, Militancy, and Power: The Evolution of Justice for Janitors from Atlanta to Washington, D.C., 1987-1998
Alyssa May Kuchinski and Joseph A. McCartin 6 Rank-and-File Leadership Development and Its Implications for Education Justice
Veronica Terriquez 7 Organizing Fast Food: Opportunities, Challenges, and SEIU
Maite Tapia and Tashlin LakhaniPart III. Global Influence and Its Challenges
8 Renewing Union Practices and Strategies: A Case Study of SEIU’s Sweet $16 Campaign in Ontario, Canada
Laurence Hamel-Roy and Yanick Noiseux 9 The Global Career of Justice for Janitors and the Limits of Institutional Permeability
Luís LM Aguiar 10 Organizing Strategies without Borders: The Case of Brazil
Euan Gibb and Luís LM Aguiar Part IV. Assessing the Legacy and Employing the Lessons of SEIU
11 The Legacy of Justice for Janitors and SEIU for the Labor Movement: An Interview with Stephen Lerner
Stephen Lerner and Joseph A. McCartinConclusion: The Future of SEIU and (Post-Neoliberal?) Labor
Luís LM Aguiar and Joseph A. McCartinContributors
Index
About the author
Edited by Luís LM Aguiar and Joseph A. McCartin
