Purple Power

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--