“As a union of healthcare workers, we recognize that the right to an abortion is fundamental to reproductive health, overall health, and bodily autonomy. 1199SEIU is appalled that the US Supreme Court has erased half a century of legal precedent allowing people to make the most basic decisions about their bodies, lives, and families. While much of the world is moving forward to secure greater reproductive rights, we have taken a tremendous step backward. Read More

“As so many of us have feared, the Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court have reversed Roe vs. Wade, gutting reproductive freedoms, protections and healthcare for tens of millions of women in the United States. This will be especially tragic in states such as Florida with a legislature and governor who already have passed radical and intrusive limitations on women’s freedom and right to self-determination. Read More

Weeks before his death in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed 1199’s Salute to Freedom Celebration at which he praised the Union for its “labor power plus soul power” strategy. Dr. King also called for a “massive civil disobedience campaign against economic inequality.” Read More

Hanna Duda has been an 1199 homecare worker with the Personal Touch agency for 22 years, since she first arrived in New York from Ukraine. She became a US citizen as soon as she could and quickly applied for family-sponsored visas for her daughters, Liliya Kupchyshyna and Halyna Palis. It took ten years for her youngest daughter, Palis, to be allowed to join her. Read More

Doreen Barnett believes that most childhood fears can be overcome if parents simply devote a little bit of time to providing age-appropriate explanations. Read More

As the country commemorated Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May, the Union took the opportunity to honor the thousands of AAPI members in its ranks. Read More

When family emergency strikes, most people will spend whatever it takes to get them through the tough times and worry about paying the bills later. Read More

Between them, the 125 staff members who work in the Food and Nutrition department at Maimonides Medical Center in South Brooklyn serve roughly 500 meals a day, both at the bedside and in the cafeteria. The hospital complex is the largest in Brooklyn, the most populous of New York City’s five boroughs. Read More

Maura Healey, the Attorney General of Massachusetts, has won the members’ endorsement in her bid to become the state’s next governor. Read More

1199 has voted to support a moratorium on the extremely energy intensive cryptocurrency mining operations that have been rapidly increasing in New York State. As former coal and gas-fired power sources have been shuttered in Upstate New York, many of their sites have been converted into computer warehouses for cryptocurrency mining, which themselves emit tons of carbon waste —speeding up climate change. Read More

Members at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt Kisco, New York, unanimously voted to ratify their second contract including the ‘gold standard’ League benefits on May 12. Read More

Worsening gang violence and kidnappings in Haiti—caused largely by economic mismanagement which can be traced back to the colonial period—has prompted a growing number of Haitian refugees to risk their lives to flee to the United States. Read More

The 1199 bargaining unit of nearly 60,000 Personal Care Attendants (PCAs) in Massachusetts—who do the work of Home Care in that state—have negotiated a tentative agreement including their largest ever wage increase in a single year. The new contract maintains a 10% pandemic premium to keep the starting wage at $17.71, which was set to expire on June 30, 2022. The rate will increase further to $17.80 on January 1, 2023, and $18 on April 1, 2023. Read More

Nursing Home members in New Jersey are raising the alarm that despite ground-breaking legislation which came into effect more than a year ago, the majority of facilities are still running short-staffed. Read More

Chris Smalls and Anjelika Maldonado have become household names since they formed a union at the Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island and won the first US election in the giant corporation’s history. Read More

Just as this edition is dropping into members mailboxes, 1199 will be swearing in hundreds of new Delegates to represent workers in the shops and officers to plan the strategic direction of the Union over the next three years. Read More

New York, NY—On Tuesday, June 14, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the largest union of healthcare workers in the nation, installed its newly-elected leadership team at a ceremony in midtown Manhattan. Read More

MIRAMAR, FLA. – The members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East – the largest union of healthcare workers in the nation representing about 450,000 caregivers – have elected Roxey C. Nelson as Executive Vice President to lead the organization in serving its 25,000 active and retired caregivers throughout Florida. Read More

Caregivers Demand Fair Union Contracts Including $15 per hour, Standard Wage Scales Based on Experience, and Better Staffing Levels While For-Profit Downstate/NJ Owners File Lawsuit Against NYS Nursing Home Reforms Requiring 3.5 Hours of Care and Investments to Improve Staffing Levels For Residents Read More

When he was murdered in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis supporting a sanitation workers’ strike. This is well known. Less well known is that is that he was in Tennessee to launch his Poor Peoples’ Campaign. This civil disobedience movement for economic justice would culminate in a march and encampment of tens of thousands of unemployed and working poor in Washington, DC just two months later. Read More