1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East
Encyclopedia
1199SEIU is a local union
of the Service Employees International Union
. With a membership of 360,000 it claims to be the largest local union in the world.
to organize pharmacists in New York City
. The local also included pharmacist
s, pharmacy
clerks and "soda jerk
s". The union led pioneering pickets and strikes
against racial segregation
and racially discriminatory hiring
in Harlem
and elsewhere in New York City during the 1930s.
The House Un-American Activities Committee
investigated Local 1199's leadership in 1948 for Communist
"infiltration". 1199 was a tiny local at the time, however, and during the expulsions of large left-led unions from the CIO
in the 1940s, 1199 eventually found shelter under the auspices of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
.
Local 1199 first successfully organized nonprofessional
hospital
workers in 1958, mobilizing a heavily Black
and Puerto Rican workforce
in the first flush of the postwar Civil Rights Movement. On 8 May 1959 about 3500 hospital workers began a strike
against seven large private hospital
s in New York City that lasted forty-six days. This unprecedented action ended when both sides agreed that labor relations
in the hospitals would be supervised by a quasi-public agency, the Permanent Administrative Committee. The committee was successfully challenged in 1962. The local began organizing
professional and technical workers in 1963, and in the same year won the right to collective bargaining
under provisions of the state's labor relations act. In 1965 it was granted the power to represent workers throughout New York State, won a contract in 1968 that for the first time secured a minimum salary for workers of $100 a week, and in 1973 began to organize registered nurses.
The union's first campaign outside of New York City was the formation of District 1199B in Columbia, South Carolina
in 1969. The union led a strike there that never led to a contract, but had success in creating new 1199 districts in Upstate New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island
, Philadelphia
, elsewhere in Pennsylvania
, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio
, and elsewhere.
Serious faction fights broke out within the flagship New York local and among other 1199 locals after the retirement of the union's original leadership. An initial attempt by the national union to merge with SEIU in the early 1980s prompted the local to leave the RWDSU to form a short-lived National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees during the 1980s, but its constituent locals soon thereafter sought mergers with other unions. Most locals eventually merged with SEIU, but 1199C in Philadelphia, under the leadership of Henry Nicholas, merged with AFSCME. Internal disputes persisted until 1989, when Dennis Rivera became its president. Rivera oversaw the local’s 1998 incorporation into SEIU and a tremendous growth in membership as it integrated smaller SEIU chapters and conducted new organizing drives.
famously described 1199 as "my favorite union," and his widow Coretta Scott King
became the honorary
chairman of 1199's organizing campaigns as it sought to expand outside of New York City beginning the late 1960s.
1199SEIU today represents 360,000 RNs, and hospital, nursing home and homecare workers of every category throughout New York State, as well as Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
More recently, Patrick Gaspard
, a former executive vice president for politics and legislation at the union, was the political director for Barack Obama's
presidential campaign. Gaspard was appointed White House Political Director during Obama’s first term in office. In addition to collective bargaining for its 360,000 members along the East Coast, 1199 utilizes its substantial budget to lobby
and make political endorsements across party lines.
Local union
A local union, often shortened to local, in North America, or a union branch in the United Kingdom and other countries is a locally-based trade union organization which forms part of a larger, usually national, union.Local branches are organized to represent the union's members from a particular...
of the Service Employees International Union
Service Employees International Union
Service Employees International Union is a labor union representing about 1.8 million workers in over 100 occupations in the United States , and Canada...
. With a membership of 360,000 it claims to be the largest local union in the world.
History
Local 1199 was founded in 1932 as a local of the Drug, Hospital, and Health Care Employees Union by Leon J. DavisLeon J. Davis
Leon J. Davis, Polish-born U.S. labor leader, November 26, 1906, Obecz, Russian Empire - September 14, 1992, New Hyde Park, New York.At the age of 15 he settled with his Russian-speaking family in Hartford, Connecticut where he attended public schools and learned English. In 1927 his family moved...
to organize pharmacists in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The local also included pharmacist
Pharmacist
Pharmacists are allied health professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use...
s, pharmacy
Pharmacy
Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemical sciences and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of pharmaceutical drugs...
clerks and "soda jerk
Soda jerk
A soda jerk was a person — typically a youth — who operated the soda fountain in a drugstore, often for the purpose of preparing and serving ice cream soda. This was made by putting flavored syrup into a specially designed tall glass, adding carbonated water and, finally, one or two scoops of ice...
s". The union led pioneering pickets and strikes
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
against racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
and racially discriminatory hiring
Employment discrimination
Employment discrimination is discrimination in hiring, promotion, job assignment, termination, and compensation. It includes various types of harassment....
in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
and elsewhere in New York City during the 1930s.
The House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
investigated Local 1199's leadership in 1948 for Communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
"infiltration". 1199 was a tiny local at the time, however, and during the expulsions of large left-led unions from the CIO
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
in the 1940s, 1199 eventually found shelter under the auspices of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is a labor union in the United States and Canada that is a semi-autonomous division of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Change to Win Federation...
.
Local 1199 first successfully organized nonprofessional
Professional
A professional is a person who is paid to undertake a specialised set of tasks and to complete them for a fee. The traditional professions were doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and commissioned military officers. Today, the term is applied to estate agents, surveyors , environmental scientists,...
hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
workers in 1958, mobilizing a heavily Black
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
and Puerto Rican workforce
Workforce
The workforce is the labour pool in employment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic region like a city, country, state, etc. The term generally excludes the employers or management, and implies those involved in...
in the first flush of the postwar Civil Rights Movement. On 8 May 1959 about 3500 hospital workers began a strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
against seven large private hospital
Private hospital
A private hospital is a hospital owned by a profit company or a non-profit organisation and privately funded through payment for medical services by patients themselves, by insurers, or by foreign embassies. This practice is very common in the United States and Australia...
s in New York City that lasted forty-six days. This unprecedented action ended when both sides agreed that labor relations
Labor relations
Industrial relations is a multidisciplinary field that studies the employment relationship. Industrial relations is increasingly being called employment relations because of the importance of non-industrial employment relationships. Many outsiders also equate industrial relations to labour relations...
in the hospitals would be supervised by a quasi-public agency, the Permanent Administrative Committee. The committee was successfully challenged in 1962. The local began organizing
Union organizer
A union organizer is a specific type of trade union member or an appointed union official. A majority of unions appoint rather than elect their organizers....
professional and technical workers in 1963, and in the same year won the right to collective bargaining
Collective bargaining
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiations between employers and the representatives of a unit of employees aimed at reaching agreements that regulate working conditions...
under provisions of the state's labor relations act. In 1965 it was granted the power to represent workers throughout New York State, won a contract in 1968 that for the first time secured a minimum salary for workers of $100 a week, and in 1973 began to organize registered nurses.
The union's first campaign outside of New York City was the formation of District 1199B in Columbia, South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina
Columbia is the state capital and largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The population was 129,272 according to the 2010 census. Columbia is the county seat of Richland County, but a portion of the city extends into neighboring Lexington County. The city is the center of a metropolitan...
in 1969. The union led a strike there that never led to a contract, but had success in creating new 1199 districts in Upstate New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island
SEIU Local 1199NE
The SEIU Local 1199NE is a local union of the Service Employees International Union in the United States. It represents 20,000 health care workers in the New England area....
, Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
, elsewhere in Pennsylvania
SEIU District 1199P
SEIU District 1199P is the former name of a health care workers local union of the Service Employees International Union in Pennsylvania. It is now called SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania. It has a membership of 20,000....
, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio
SEIU 1199 WKO
SEIU 1199 WKO is a local of the Service Employees International Union, SEIU representing Health Care and Social Service Workers in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio. Before merging with SEIU 1199 WKO was part of 1199: The National Health Care Workers' Union....
, and elsewhere.
Serious faction fights broke out within the flagship New York local and among other 1199 locals after the retirement of the union's original leadership. An initial attempt by the national union to merge with SEIU in the early 1980s prompted the local to leave the RWDSU to form a short-lived National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees during the 1980s, but its constituent locals soon thereafter sought mergers with other unions. Most locals eventually merged with SEIU, but 1199C in Philadelphia, under the leadership of Henry Nicholas, merged with AFSCME. Internal disputes persisted until 1989, when Dennis Rivera became its president. Rivera oversaw the local’s 1998 incorporation into SEIU and a tremendous growth in membership as it integrated smaller SEIU chapters and conducted new organizing drives.
Influence
Martin Luther King, Jr.Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
famously described 1199 as "my favorite union," and his widow Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader. The widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King helped lead the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.Mrs...
became the honorary
Title of honor
An honorary title or title of honor is a title bestowed upon individuals or organizations as an award in recognition of their merits.Sometimes the title bears the same or nearly the same name as a title of authority, but the person bestowed does not have to carry any duties, possibly except for...
chairman of 1199's organizing campaigns as it sought to expand outside of New York City beginning the late 1960s.
1199SEIU today represents 360,000 RNs, and hospital, nursing home and homecare workers of every category throughout New York State, as well as Massachusetts, New Jersey, Florida, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
More recently, Patrick Gaspard
Patrick Gaspard
Patrick Gaspard is the Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee, and served as Director of the Office of Political Affairs for the Obama administration from January 2009 to 2011...
, a former executive vice president for politics and legislation at the union, was the political director for Barack Obama's
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
presidential campaign. Gaspard was appointed White House Political Director during Obama’s first term in office. In addition to collective bargaining for its 360,000 members along the East Coast, 1199 utilizes its substantial budget to lobby
Lobby
Lobby may refer to:* Lobby , an entranceway or foyer in a building* Lobbying, the action or the group used to influence a viewpoint to politicians* Lobby , a thick stew made in North Staffordshire, not unlike Lancashire Hotpot...
and make political endorsements across party lines.