SEIU Starts 'Cross-Sector' Union to Unionize Workers across the South
A new union will be targeting fast food, retail, warehouse, care, and other service industry workers across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama for unionization.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU)—the union behind the Fight for $15 movement, the Starbucks Workers United, and the largest (mostly) private-sector union in the United States—has launched a cross-sector union affiliate to unionize workers in the Southern United States.
In a lengthy article entitled “The South Has a New Union — and Workers Have Black Women to Thank,” Truthout.org writers provide a background to the new called the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), stating, “the Union of Southern Service Workers offers membership to fast food, retail, care, and other service industry workers.”
In November, workers from across the South gathered in South Carolina to say “no more”: No more low wages. No more going without health insurance, sick leave, control over their own schedules, and protections from discrimination and harassment. No more exploitation. The vehicle that will help make these demands a reality is the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), a first-of-its-kind cross-sector union offering membership to fast food, retail, warehouse, care, and other service industry workers across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.
USSW is a continuance of Raise Up, the very active southern chapter of the Fight for $15 and a Union that formed in 2013 and took root in North Carolina. USSW will function as a part of the Service Employees International Union, a labor union that represents nearly 2 million workers in the U.S. and Canada.
With union membership in the South being among the lowest in the nation, organizing the south has long been a goal of unions.
“Reinventing the labor movement must mean investment in strategies and in places that are different than in the past.” MaryBe McMillan, Secretary-Treasurer of North Carolina State AFL-CIO, urged nearly a decade ago.
“It must mean waging the fight where it is most difficult for workers,” she wrote. “Let’s organize the South, and we will watch the nation change.”
While the SEIU’s efforts to unionize the South are still in their infancy, the union—which has bankrolled the efforts to unionize Starbucks and spent tens of millions over the last decade on the Fight for $15 movement to unionize fast-food workers—has deep pockets, a large PR team and hundreds of union organizers to invest its the campaign to expand unions in the South.
Read the entire Truthout article here.