Washington, D.C. — Following the announcement that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) will rejoin the AFL-CIO, Jobs With Justice Executive Director Erica Smiley issued the following statement:
“After 20 years apart, SEIU will rejoin the AFL-CIO, not simply to squash an old conflict but to invigorate the labor movement and its role in building a more powerful democracy. SEIU President April Verrett and AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler are doing far more than simply reuniting two storied institutions. They are consolidating the power of institutional labor to ensure that everyone has an equal voice in decision-making in all aspects of their lives, lifting up the workplace as a critical site of struggle in the nation’s current battle to build a healthy, multiracial democracy.
Jobs With Justice is well positioned to use our power and ready to defend and expand the dignity of everyday people during this pivotal time in our nation’s history. We recognize that our country has long been a democracy-in-training. This is why we positioned ourselves across the economic battlefront–expanding organizing and collective bargaining in order to protect our aspirations for a true democracy from those aiming to control us in every way. The strategy to save and expand democracy rests with our ability to build the governing power of the majority in key industries and labor markets, in addition to civil society.
It matters that Liz Shuler is the first woman to lead the federation and that April Verrett is the first Black woman to lead SEIU. Trailblazers in their own right, they and the many who worked with them to make this possible understand the urgency of detangling ourselves from internal tensions in order to center the interests of workers–be they current or future union members. Under their respective leaderships, labor unions have not allowed themselves to be stuck looking inward only to existing members, but to galvanize those members to organize the many unorganized people in the country.
Under their leadership, labor unions stood alongside migrant workers, Black workers and southern workers in general to do what was previously thought to be impossible–to expand labor protections and democracy to workers long excluded from the current framework, thus expanding collective bargaining and governing power to millions of people. We know it because we have been right there with them, supporting fast food workers organizing the United Southern Service Workers, working with manufacturing and construction workers to ensure federal investments into sustainable energy did not trample over the human needs of working people, and workers throughout the public sector fight to win respect not only for themselves but for the people they serve.
Today, we celebrate this incredible news and lift up SEIU, the AFL-CIO, alongside their 15 million members. As the wealthiest and biggest corporations scheme together with the forces of autocracy, then we will join together in support of democracy. Together, we will build the democracy of all our ancestors’ dreams as we work to ensure our rights, freedoms, and dignity are protected–from the factory floor to the ballot box.”
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Jobs With Justice is the country’s leading nonprofit in the fight for workplace and economic democracy. Comprising a national network of local affiliates in nearly every state, Jobs With Justice brings together coalitions of unions, worker organizations, community groups, students, and faith institutions to win concrete improvements in people’s lives.
