Service Union Plans Big Push to Turn Midwest Political Tide
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 labor-friendly stands on the minimum wage, unions and health care.
“In Midwestern states, the battlegrounds, people really like unions,” said Celinda Lake,
a Democratic pollster who has done work for unions, including the service employees.
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 furious assault from conservative forces in recent decades, culminating in President Trump’s electoral sweep of the traditionally Democratic states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Mr. Courtney, an architect of that effort, said the Fight for 15 would join the new initiative and
that the idea was to combine two projects in which the union has considerable expertise: organizing workers and mobilizing voters.
He said that door-to-door canvassing for issues like a $15 minimum wage, union access
and universal health care in the coming months would give way to electoral canvassing as next year’s voting approaches.
“If the issue Big Labor plans on raising is right to work, then
that should be a winning debate for candidates who have voted to oppose forced union dues,” Mr. Semmens said in an email.
