SEIU
SEIU members are seen at a September 2024 rally outside a Waffle House restaurant in Concord, North Carolina.
Late last month, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) kicked off the “Women Lead: Unions for All” organizing summit in Concord, North Carolina, which brought together hundreds of workers from across the country. The summit was part of a $200 million investment by the two million-member union to get out the vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and other pro-worker candidates in down-ballot races in key swing states, and a springboard to building worker power by 2030.
The summit began with a panel discussion about the need for a strong labor movement to strengthen democracy. Speakers tied pressing economic issues like low wages and corporate price-gouging to reproductive rights, climate change, and other policies with a significant impact on the most vulnerable workers. In particular, newly elected SEIU President April Verrett emphasized the importance of organizing workers who aren’t “white dudes in hard hats.”
“If we’re going to build a 21st-century movement for 21st-century workers in a 21st-century economy, we gotta go to the places where those of us who don’t have power have the opportunity to go and get us some,” Verrett said.
After the panels, a weekend canvass started with a rally outside of a local Waffle House, the subject of an organizing campaign from an SEIU-affiliated union. Workers both inside and outside the service industry gave speeches about the challenges they faced at their jobs, their demands, and why they believed Harris is the best choice for workers.
“We shouldn’t have to go to work, going from plane to plane, and can’t get a cup of water,” said Priscilla Hoyle, an SEIU member and a cabin cleaner at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. “We shouldn’t have to go into our break rooms and not have AC to be able to cool off.” Hoyle and other employees at the Charlotte airport are leading an effort to demand that the Charlotte City Council intervene to improve pay and working conditions.
When the rally ended, attendees broke off and knocked on doors. They spoke to local residents about the issues they considered most important for this election. One canvasser, Angela Kissinger, observed that residents in different age groups gave somewhat different answers.
“Between [people in their] mid-twenties, early thirties, they’re more talking about housing,” said Kissinger, who has prior experience canvassing in her home state of California. “If you’re talking to [people] 40 and over, they’re more [concerned about] health care. That’s very important to them. The younger generation, between 18 and 20, is more about being able to buy a home one day or to open up a business, because most of the young people want to be entrepreneurs.”
“Domestic workers, home care workers were written out of the National Labor Relations Act because it was work done by Black women.”
Despite Concord being a more conservative-leaning city, its proximity to the more liberal Charlotte notwithstanding, Kissinger found that many residents were receptive to her messaging and were willing to vote for Harris in November.
“They were amazed that we came all the way from California to knock on their door,” Kissinger said. “They felt important, which they should, because they are just as important as California.”
North Carolina’s status as a battleground state makes it an important strategic location for canvassing. Some recent polls show Trump leading Harris in North Carolina by as little as one to three percentage points, while others show them in a dead heat. The FiveThirtyEight polling average has Trump up by less than a point.
The Harris campaign has repeatedly framed her as the “worker-friendly” or “middle class–friendly” candidate. Harris also has a long-standing relationship with SEIU, related to the organizing work the union has done in California. So having union members reach out to voters may help solidify that reputation, and subsequently, turn the tide in Harris’s favor.
But as Verrett pointed out, North Carolina and the South more broadly are also important battlegrounds for the labor movement, especially as it relates to the legacy of systemic racism.
“It’s been a part of the design,” said Verrett, who is also the first Black woman to serve as SEIU’s president. “Because racism, union busting, anti-union behavior. It all goes hand in hand.”
The South has historically had the lowest rate of union membership of any region in the United States. During the Industrial Revolution, the development of manufacturing progressed more slowly in the region than in the Northeast, which was becoming much less economically dependent on agriculture. Much of the South’s resistance to industrialization centered around its refusal to end slavery, a major source of agricultural labor. But even after the abolition of slavery, Southern states implemented laws that restricted the power of unions as a way to disenfranchise its newly emergent Black workforce. For example, “right to work” laws, which allow non-union employees to benefit from union contracts without joining the union, were first signed into law in states like Texas to restrict the growth of labor unions, some of which opposed segregation. Many of those right-to-work laws are still in place throughout the South to this day, which makes forming unions even more difficult than in other parts of the country.
It’s especially significant that a union dedicated to service workers is spearheading this effort, not only because the service industry is much less unionized than industries like manufacturing, but also because jobs in the service industry, from fast food to in-home care, are disproportionately held by women.
Mothers in particular often have to take these jobs—many of which are part-time—as the more flexible scheduling allows them to more easily balance working outside the home with child care or elder care. But this flexibility comes with major trade-offs like lower wages and poorer benefits. Even with the positive gains made by the labor movement in recent years, women—especially women of color—are the least likely to see the benefits.
“We also know we got to write new rules because [many of] the workers that we seek to organize today can’t join a union,” Verrett said. “Domestic workers, home care workers were written out of the National Labor Relations Act because it was work done by Black women.”
It’s notable that the rally took place in front of a Waffle House, which Hoyle described in her speech as “one of the most notorious corporations in the South.” Waffle House is currently at the epicenter of a larger effort to organize the South. The Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW) is leading the campaign for higher wages, safer working conditions, and an end to the company’s meal credit deduction, which takes money from employees’ paychecks to pay for on-site meals, even if employees do not order food during their shift.
“They have this ridiculous meal credit deduction policy where they take $3 and some change out of our checks, whether we eat or not, every shift that you work,” said Naomi Harris, a former Waffle House server and current USSW member. “We only make about $3 and some change [per hour], so essentially, I’m working for free for an hour and a half for the money that you’re taking out of my check.”
