Union plans a big push in effort to turn political tide in Midwest
Challenging the Republican ascendance in states where labor once carried enormous sway, a union plans to spend tens of millions of dollars during the 2018 campaign cycle to reverse the trend.
The Service Employees International Union, one of the largest and wealthiest unions in the United States with roughly 2 million members, will fund an extensive campaign over the next 14 months to elect politicians with laborfriendly stands on the minimum wage, unions and health care.
The effort will primarily aim at the traditionally industrial states of the Midwest and Rust Belt, where labor’s political influence has come under a assault from conservative forces in recent decades, culminating in President Donald Trump’s sweep of the traditionally Democratic states of Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Since 2010, four states in the region have enacted socalled right-to-work legislation that allows workers to opt out of paying fees to unions that bargain on their behalf. Elected leaders in several states have acted to block or reverse minimum-wage increases.
“If you think about what the No. 1 job of an elected official ought to be, it’s raising the standard of living of citizens they’re elected to represent,” said Scott Courtney, an executive vice president of the union, which will formally unveil the initiative on Labor Day. “But if you look at what has been happening in battleground states in the Midwest, it’s just the opposite.”
The involvement of SEIU, whose membership in the Midwest has increased over much of the past generation, is in some sense a reflection of the changing economic landscape of the region, where health care has replaced manufacturing as the top employer in many states.
But in another way, the effort is a matter of survival: With industrial unions depleted by globalization and automation, the stronger position of public- and service-sector unions has made them bigger targets for the right. Several Republican governors elected since 2010 embraced legislation that would restrict what public-sector unions can bargain for or rein in their members’ pensions.
One of the SEIU’s biggest initiatives in recent years has been the Fight for 15 campaign, an effort to raise wages and win union rights for low-paid workers that began in the fastfood industry.
Courtney said the Fight for 15 would join the new initiative.