What type of work do SEIU members do?

Healthcare

SEIU Healthcare, the healthcare arm of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is the largest healthcare union in North America with more than 1.1 million members.

We are doctors and nurses, home care and nursing home workers; we are lab techs, environmental service workers and dietary aides. We are front-line healthcare workers who care for more than 60 million patients across 29 states and two countries. We are caregivers in hospitals, health centers, nursing homes, in-home care and in our communities.

Launched in 2007 with a vision of uniting healthcare workers throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico and delivering the highest quality care to all, we are living this vision today.

Property Services

Property Services workers are janitors, security officers, maintenance and custodial workers, stadium and arena workers, window cleaners, and other workers who provide important services.

Approximately 386,000 SEIU property services workers nationwide clean, maintain, and provide security for commercial office buildings, co-ops, and apartment buildings, as well as public facilities like theaters, stadiums, and airports.

For over two decades, SEIU's Justice for Janitors movement has helped low-wage workers achieve social and economic justice and earn broad-based support from the public as well as religious, political and community leaders. More than 225,000 janitors in more than 30 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada have united in SEIU, America's largest union of property services workers.

Stand for Security is a national, community-based campaign to build stronger communities by helping hundreds of thousands of African-American security officers win a better future.

Public Services

We are the second largest union of public service employees with more than 1 million local and state government workers, public school employees, bus drivers, and child care providers - including 80,000 early learning and child care professionals.

What does SEIU do?

We believe that uniting with others who do the same type of work, you will have a stronger voice on the job and in your community -- and you can help create a better future for yourself and all Americans.

SEIU is a center of unity for underpaid workers who are demanding that our economy works for everyone - not just the rich.

We are taking bold actions to unite the nine out of 10 non-union workers in America. We continue to work with our partners in the labor, progressive and religious communities to launch innovative campaigns that bring new hope and opportunity to workers in today's global economy.

We are building a 21st-century global union to help ensure that workers, not just corporations and CEOs, benefit from today's global economy. SEIU is working with unions in similar industries across the globe to challenge multi-nationals to provide comparable wages and benefits, and allow workers in every country the freedom to form unions.

SEIU members have joined workers from France and Great Britain and members of Unison and the CGT and French labor federation CFDT, in global delegations on both sides of the Atlantic. And, unionists from around the world have come together with SEIU to hold civil disobedience rallies, march with workers and met one-on-one with workers in a commitment to take the stories of U.S. workers to the management of international companies based and operating overseas.

How is SEIU structured?

SEIU is built by 2 million workers across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico who work in three key service industries: healthcare, public services and property services.

Those 2 million workers are around the nation as part of one of our more than 150 local union affiliates. Each is a chartered branch that carries forth the mission and goals of the International Union while representing the specific interests of locally based memberships.

SEIU locals have their own officers, governing bodies, and constitutions and bylaws. Local union members bargain with employers to produce collective bargaining agreements that set workplace rules, benefits and wages.

In addition to local unions, SEIU has more than 15 state councils that represent all SEIU locals in a particular state. These councils work to coordinate and unify the locals' programs and campaigns, such as those that are legislative and political in nature, to meet members' shared goals.