[9][10] The SEIU was founded on April 23, 1921 in Chicago as the Building Service Employees International Union (BSEIU); its first members were janitors, elevator operators, and window washers.
[16][15] The Change to Win Federation held its founding convention in September 2005, where SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger was announced as the organization's chair.
SEIU has organized large numbers of home care attendants in Oregon,[23][24] Missouri,[25] and Wisconsin,[26] among other states, in some cases working together with other unions.
Over 5,000 janitors organized with SEIU in Houston, Texas in 2005, which was especially significant due to the size of the campaign and its location in an area with low union density.
[28] This victory was shortly followed by another 600 workers at North Shore Medical Center, also in Miami, voting to join the SEIU in early 2006.
[33] In June 2004, SEIU launched a non-union-member affiliate group called Purple Ocean as a mechanism to mobilize non-SEIU members in support of the union's agenda.
[37][38] In January 2015, the SEIU endorsed Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party's nominee for the US Presidency, despite her opposition to the union's flagship "Fight for $15" campaign.
[41] On November 15, 2023, President Joe Biden nominated Nicole Berner, the general counsel of the SEIU, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Tactics recommended include references to blackmail and extortion, accusations of racism and sexism, targeting the homes and neighborhoods of business leaders for demonstrations, and also explicitly stated that at times it is necessary to "disobey the law.
On January 27, 2009, SEIU placed UHW West under trusteeship and dismissed 70 of the local's executives, including president Sal Rosselli.
[57][58] Rosselli and other ousted leaders reformed under the name National Union of Healthcare Workers and pushed for UHW West members at 60 facilities to vote to decertify SEIU.
In 2010, SEIU 32BJ's Thomas Shortman Training Fund was awarded a $2.8 million grant by the Department of Labor,[64] as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act aiming to create jobs in expanding green industries over the following two years.
[67] Around 700 janitorial members of the local launched a walk-off on March 24, 2021, striking in favor of workplace safety measures including "sexual harassment safeguards", of fair pay, and of seniority rights.
[71] SEIU Local 1000 represents 95000 State Government Employees, many of whom are office and administrative workers, librarians, engineers and nurses.
[72] Local 1000 deals with issues of concern to current rank-and-file state employees, such as salaries, benefits, working conditions and contract negotiations.
SEIU contracts also cover some non-members, known as agency fee payers, which since 2005 have numbered comparatively about one tenth of the size of the union's membership.
[3] The official repository of SEIU is the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University in Detroit.
[77] The Reuther Library, the largest labor archives in North America,[78] holds the most complete collection of primary source materials regarding SEIU with over 1,000 linear feet of the union's records covering 105 years of history (1905-2010).
The SEIU Collections include a variety of organizational, executive, photographic, and publicity materials along with many other additional record types.
The records of SEIU's United Service Workers West, including the Justice for Janitors campaign are held by the UCLA Library Department of Special Collections.
[82] The program aims to support the home-based caregiving -- a lower-cost alternative to institutional care that has lost many providers in recent years due to low rates and tough working conditions.