The Service Employees International Union’s recently launched a 1-million-member health care union and will have an annual budget of about $120 million and 4,000 organizers at its disposal to sign up the 10 million unorganized non-supervisory health care workers, according to union organizers.

The “bulk of the work” of the new union will be in organizing. Organizers expect to add 80,000 to 100,000 new members to the union’s rolls in the next year. “If we grow, we have more influence,” and are able to improve the lives of members and patients, organizers stated.
There are “several initiatives” that include drives among national hospital and nursing home chains, Catholic institutions, investor-owned hospitals and nursing homes, and teaching hospitals. In addition, the union is organizing some 35,000 home care workers in various states including Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

For more information, visit their new web site.

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What’s your experience with the SEIU? Do you have any of your home care employees who are members of this union? What has the impact been?

What’s your view on how open home care workers are to being organized by this new healthcare union? Please give us your comments below.