SEIU Healthcare 775NW delegates, Berta Alvarado, T.J. Janssen and Karen Washington at the 2012 SEIU Convention in Denver.
New Strategic Direction Adopted to Close Gap between the Rich and Everyone Else, Re-elect Pres. Barack Obama, Spark Organizing Surge
DENVER, CO – On May 30, member delegates at the 25th Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Convention voted to adopt a new strategic vision to confront the growing gap between the rich and everyone else in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, to re-elect President Barack Obama and champions of the 99% everywhere, and to create the conditions to spark a historic organizing surge.
SEIU Healthcare 775NW delegates joined 1,800 other delegates from the International Union to unite, lead, fight and win for the 99%.
Member delegates representing the union’s 2.1 million members, who also elected its International Executive Board members, endorsed a comprehensive program to engage in unprecedented levels of coordination with strategic partners and to recruit, train and mobilize more than 100,000 member-leaders across the union who will reach out to friends, neighbors and co-workers to demand justice for the 99%.
Our local’s president, David Rolf was re-elected International Vice President by 1800 delegates to the 2012 SEIU International Convention.
“Now, more than ever, we are called to organize,” said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, who was re-elected a day earlier. “From laws that strip workers’ right to a voice on the job to efforts to systematically eliminate voting rights, the campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the continued scapegoating of immigrants and a maliciously rigged tax system, the 1% has launched attack on everything that working people hold dear.”
Conference attendees also committed to re-electing Pres. Obama and pro-worker candidates at all levels of government and to hold elected leaders accountable to an agenda of good jobs now, insisting that everyone pay their fair share, investment in vital public services like education and healthcare and comprehensive immigration reform.
“The last organizing surge of working people was in the 1930s,” said Henry as she challenged attendees to take to the streets in a broad 99% movement. “Today, I am calling on the leaders of SEIU to commit ourselves to revitalizing a workers’ movement by creating the conditions for millions of workers to organize, lift wages and create jobs we can support our families on.”