1199 began as New York City pharmacists’ Union in 1932 and New York City remains, to this day, the primary base of the organization. In 1959, the largely male, Jewish drugstore Union began to transform itself by launching drives to organize the city’s voluntary, not-for profit hospitals and their primarily female, African-American and Latino workers.
Number of Members: 200,000
Number of Delegates: 4,247
Number of Facilities: 1,138
Delegates
Everyday, 1199SEIU members are continuing to build on our historic growth in New York by uniting and organizing healthcare and home care workers across the state.
Members of 1199SEIU, the New York Central Labor Council and other labor and progressive organizations joined workers at from the City University of New York’s Research Foundation on their picket line May 21 as they demonstrated outside CUNY’s Journalism School in midtown Manhattan.
About a thousand workers from the Partners in Care homecare agency gathered at a mid-town Manhattan hotel on May 20 to kick off their campaign for a new contract and to meet with the negotiating committee that would be representing them at the bargaining table.
At a Monday press conference on the steps of New York City Hall, 1199SEIU President George Gresham announced the Union’s support for New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio in the New York City mayoral race.
Several generations of the 1199SEIU family gathered in the Union’s New York City Retired Members Division on May 16 to hear Harry Belafonte announce the reinvigoration of 1199SEIU’s Bread and Roses Cultural Project and its inauguration of the acclaimed storytelling series The Moth, for 1199SEIU’s retirees.
