The United Media Guild says it has organized activists hired by the Service Employees International Union to lead the latter’s “Fight for $15” minimum wage movement, placing an awkward spotlight on the SEIU, which has been unenthusiastic about letting its own organizers organize.
“Fight For $15 is the international movement of underpaid workers taking a stand against poverty wages. The activists we’ve represented have worked the front lines of that battle. So the UMG is pleased to announce we now represent organizers coast to coast in the consolidated national fast food campaign,” the St. Louis-based affiliate of the Communications Workers of America announced this week.
The United Media Guild says it formally organized the activists through a card check election on Nov. 29. Its announcement does not state whether SEIU has formally agreed, though it does state, “Soon we will start bargaining their initial collective bargaining agreement with the National Fast Food Workers Union (an affiliate of SEIU).”
Representatives for the two unions could not be reached for comment.
While advocates typically portray the movement for a $15 minimum wage as an organic effort by fast-food industry workers, the SEIU has been the main force behind it. The union poured at least $14 million into the effort in 2016 alone. That includes $3.6 million to the Fast Food Workers Committee, the main group behind the “Fight For $15” movement, as well as nearly $9 million to regional workers committees engaged in similar activism.
The campaign is part of an effort by the SEIU to get major fast food chains to agree to organize. Ironically, SEIU has resisted letting its own organizers organize. A speech by SEIU President Mary Kay Henry in Richmond Va., last year at a minimum wage organizing event was protested by the pro-minimum wage activists the union had hired. Two dozen people rushed the stage carrying signs that said: “$15 minimum wage and union rights for all means FF organizers too,” sparking pandemonium in the hall. Henry was forced to briefly stop her speech.
“The organizers would like to have their own rights recognized. We aren’t being given ours,” Jody Lynn Fennell, one of the protesters, told the Washington Examiner shortly after the incident.
SEIU later said it respected the organizers’ rights to organize and noted that some were already unionized. It said it was willing to talk with the unorganized activists.
