Industry-Leading Standards for Workers
Together with the million workers already in our union, the strength of the million more who’ve united with SEIU since 1996 has helped us maintain and improve standards in our industries for pay, health care, and retirement at a time when working conditions for many in America have declined.
Here are just a few examples from around the country in different SEIU-represented sectors:
Twenty-three percent raises for nurses.
Nearly 4,000 hospital workers at six hospitals affiliated with HCA – the largest for-profit hospital corporation in A
merica – won a first contract that includes raises of up to 23 percent for nurses through 2011 and committees to ensure front-line caregivers a voice in patient care.
Across the country, SEIU hospital workers have continued to protect and improve on industry leading standards in pay, benefits, staffing, and training – from the agreement between 70,000 1199SEIU members in New York and the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes; to the master contract for approximately 14,000 caregivers at Catholic Healthcare West; to nurses at two Las Vegas hospitals owned by the for-profit Universal Health System who withstood a five-day lockout and won a stronger voice about how they care for patients.
$30 million in new funding for home care wages. More than 41,000 home care aides in Michigan joined SEIU and won $30 million in new funding for wage increases from the Republican-led state legislature.
In states up and down the West Coast, thousands of SEIU home care workers have transformed home care from a job that paid poverty wages with no health benefits to a career with training, health benefits and pay raises.
Prescription drug coverage for nursing home workers. In Illinois, SEIU nursing home workers won the biggest pay increases in the history of their local union, gained prescription drug coverage for the first time, preserved their employer-paid pension program, and paved the way toward helping nursing home workers in more than 100 other facilities unite with SEIU.
Over the past four years, SEIU nursing home workers in New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin negotiated new contracts that improved wages and benefits for thousands of members. Family health insurance for security officers. After the first-ever strike of security officers on the West Coast, nearly 4,000 Bay Area private security officers won affordable family health insurance and wage increases. In Los Angeles, an additional 4,000 security officers voted overwhelmingly to approve their first union contract, raising total compensation – wages and healthcare – by nearly 40 percent. These private security officers now receive affordable family health care, guaranteed annual wage increases, paid sick days, holidays and vacation, increased training, and a career ladder to professionalize the industry.
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Stand for Security
A national community-based
campaign to organize security officers is bringing hope to hundreds of
thousands of black workers and their families.
Visit StandForSecurity.org »
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SEIU’s “Stand for Security Campaign” among private security officers in cities from Boston to D.C. to Los Angeles is the largest effort to unite African-American workers since the Pullman Porters in 1925.
Pay increases to raise janitors out of poverty. In Houston, 5,300 commercial janitors won a first contract with SEIU that doubles their income by the end of the three-year agreement, provides access to affordable health benefits, and guarantees them more than just part-time work.
Over the past several years SEIU janitors nationwide have won gains despite tough economic times – including 50,000 janitors and maintenance workers from Washington, DC to Hartford, CT who won affordable family healthcare, more work hours, pension benefits, and pay raises ranging from 12 to 26 percent ; and 15,000 janitors in Chicago who won their highest wage increase in decades.
Pay raises for low-wage public employees in the south. In San Antonio, 6,300 city employees united in SEIU and won a step pay plan in 2007 that raises the average worker’s pay 6.5 percent each year for the next four years.
$250 million in new state funding for child care. In Illinois, 49,000 child care providers united in SEIU and won $250 million in new state funding that delivers increased pay, new health insurance benefits, and training opportunities.