[[link removed]]

SEIU’S NEW INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT LOOKS TO HELP END POVERTY-WAGE
WORK IN AMERICA  
[[link removed]]


 

Karen Juanita Carrillo
June 30, 2024
Amsterdam News
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ April Verrett, the newly elected international president of the
Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is ready to come out the
gate running––or, at least, organizing. _

April Verrett is SEIU’s new international president , Photo credit:
SEIU

 

April Verrett, the newly elected international president of
the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
[[link removed]], is ready to come out the gate
running––or, at least, organizing. 

Verrett says she plans to lead SEIU in a campaign of helping to
unionize up to a million new workers over the next 10 years.

Talking with people about unions and helping them to understand that
joining a worker’s organization is a way to build collective power
is part of Verrett’s progressive stance. She said that
“ultimately, as an organizer, I want to be able to say I did
something to help end poverty and poverty-wage work in America.”

She told the _Amsterdam News_ that “I believe we are in a moment
of transformation. To be able to build enough worker power to end
poverty-wage work calls on us to transform our labor movement—to
organize like never before, and to make sure we take advantage of the
newfound interest that many working people have in unions,
particularly young people, and focus our effort on organizing
everyone, particularly organizing those of us that have been the most
marginalized: low-wage workers, workers of color, Black workers, women
workers. That is how I’m choosing to use my time—to really lean in
and focus us on this goal.”

Verrett comes from an organizing background. After her parents died,
she was raised on the South Side of Chicago by her grandmother, who
was a union steward at SEIU Local 46. As a steward, her grandmother
guided other employees and showed them how they could unite to gain
better pay and benefits.

Verrett took the example of her grandmother’s organizing zeal and
has spent decades supporting community organizing. In addition to
helping found Chicago’s United Working Families
[[link removed]] organization, Verrett has
worked within the SEIU as president of California’s SEIU Local 2015
[[link removed]], chair of the SEIU National Home Care
Council, executive vice president of SEIU Healthcare Illinois and
Indiana (HCII) [[link removed]], and most recently for two
years as SEIU’s secretary-treasurer. 

This past May, SEIU members elected Verrett to serve as their
international president, making her the SEIU’s first Black female
leader. She is serving as president after the 14-year reign of Mary
Kay Henry, the union’s first white female and LGBTQ president. 

With nearly 2 million members, SEIU is one of the largest unions in
the country. Its workers are employed in more than 100 occupations
throughout the United States and in Canada. The union traditionally
organizes healthcare workers; public service employees; and people who
work in property maintenance jobs, such as janitors and security
guards. 

An SEIU spokesperson said that, demographically, more than half of its
members are women: They “are just roughly about a quarter Black, a
quarter Latino, and just under 10 percent Asian American and Pacific
Islander.” 

SEIU’s retiring union president was a major backer of the Fight for
$15 and a union movement [[link removed]] that helped
organize fast-food workers across the nation. Verrett said she wants
SEIU to continue to bear down on its core industries, and to further
its inroads into industries where workers don’t have
representation. 

“Our goal is to organize those who have been the most marginalized,
and that’s often folks who work in the gig economy,” Verrett said.
“Today, we represent over 700,000 caregivers, workers in home
care—it’s the fastest-growing job classification in the country.
It will continue to be a big area of focus for us. And we will
continue to organize folks in the fast-food industry, in airports.

“We are an organizing union, whether it’s organizing not-yet union
workers or organizing voters. It’s all about how we are organizing
workers, putting workers in motion to have agency and
self-determination over their own lives. We’re organizing to build
power, whether it’s to build power in the workplace or build a new
power at the ballot box. And we are a union that’s very invested in
electoral politics. Across our union, we’re going to spend over $200
million in this [national election] cycle, leading up to November, to
make sure we contact 6 million [of what] I call…high-opportunity
voters—others call them infrequent voters or most simply voters, but
we are going to contact 6 million voters, largely voters of color, in
eight key battleground states, to make sure we elect pro-union
champions up and down the ballot.”

KAREN JUANITA CARRILLO, General Assignment Reporter at Amsterdam News,
is a Brooklyn, New York-based author and a frequent speaker on African
American and Afro Latino history and politics. Her news reporting has
widened knowledge about Black communities in the Americas and won
awards from the New York Association of Black Journalists, New
California Media Awards, and the National Newspapers Publishers
Association. 

Carrillo is co-founder of the website www.Afropresencia.org
[[link removed]], which she started to help promote the
dissemination of information about Afrodescendants in the Americas.
AfroPresencia is a United Nations-accredited NGO; one of its tasks is
to help organize grassroots groups that are working to provide aid to
people of African descent.

Karen is also the author of the following books:

San Mateo de Cangrejos: historical notes on a self-emancipated Black
community in Puerto Rico by Gilberto Aponte Torres; translated by
Karen Juanita Carrillo. (SUNY Press, 2023; ISBN: 9781438491516)
African American-Latino Relations in the 21st Century: When Cultures
Collide (ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press, 2017; ISBN:  978-1-4408-2961-1)
African American History Day by Day: A Reference Guide to Events
(ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press, June 2012; ISBN: 978-1-59884-360-6),
Bibliography Of Life In The Black Americas (Dec 31, 2012; ASIN:
B00AVE92J0), and
The View from Chocó: The Afro-Colombian Past, Their Lives in the
Present, and Their Hopes for the Future (May 21, 2010; ISBN:
1451565275 / 1-4515-6527-5).

SUPPORT OUR RACIAL EQUITY JOURNALISM
[[link removed]] AT AMSTERDAM NEWS.

Amsterdam News is renowned for its reporting of the news of the day
from a Black perspective for 113 years. Donors who choose to give
monthly or annually will receive Amsterdam News’ Weekly E-Edition
and acclaimed free weekday newsletter Editorially Black delivered by
email.

* SEIU
[[link removed]]
* organizing
[[link removed]]
* unions
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]