The Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s most powerful labor groups, last year chopped funding on its push for a $15 minimum wage at fast-food restaurants to the lowest level in four years.
The union poured $13.3 million into the effort in 2017, down from $14 million in 2016 and as much as $23 million in 2014, according to Labor Department filings. The SEIU has been the main organizing force behind the nationwide push for raising the minimum wage.
Its not clear why the union has been been cutting back on the funding. Its activism was initially part of an effort to organize workers at fast-food restaurants, which the organizers tried to present as a grassroots effort led by the workers themselves. The union has had little success in organizing, but the push inspired liberal office holders in cities and states such as New York and California to adopt $15 minimum wages, and it is now part of the official Democratic Party platform.
An SEIU representative who requested anonymity declined to give an exact figure for the spending last year but said that the numbers in the federal filing undercounted the overall amount because the union moved resources from city-level groups to another organization, the National Fast Food Workers Union. However, the filing shows that $1.5 million went to that group, which was included in the Washington Examiner’s $13.3 million estimate.
The union-led effort has suffered from some major internal turmoil. Last year, SEIU Executive Vice President Scott Courtney, credited as one of the architects of the movement, resigned following an internal investigation into charges that he violated union rules against dating subordinates.
Also last year, Kendall Fells, who ran the union’s Fast Food Workers Committee, resigned following an investigation into charges of sexual harassment. Chicago organizer Caleb Jennings and Detroit organizer Mark Raleigh were fired after similar probes.
It is not clear who, if anyone, is running the effort. The SEIU source said a successor to Fells had been appointed, which would be announced at a later date.
SEIU found itself in another tricky situation last year when another another union, the United Media Guild, said it had organized the workers it hired for the minimum wage push itself. The workers protested a speech by SEIU President Mary Kay Henry in Richmond, Va., in 2016, saying that the union didn’t pay them the equivalent of a $15 wage and were angrily shouted down by other union members. SEIU officially recognized the UMG union late last year.
The recently released Labor Department filing indicates that the SEIU gave $3.8 million directly to Fight for $15 and the Fast Food Workers Committee, two of main organizing groups, $2.2 million to outside PR groups such as the firm Berlin Rosen, and $7.3 million to the various regional organizing committees involved in the effort.
Conservative critics said the drop-off was proof that the SEIU had failed in its initial mission: signing up more members.
“Despite spending tens of millions of dues dollars on the Fight for $15, the SEIU has failed to achieve its true goal: securing new dues-paying members in quick-service restaurants. The union’s desperation is evident in places such as New York City, where the SEIU is pursuing legally questionable schemes to collect dues-like payments from employees,” said Luka Ladan, communications director for the Center for Union Facts.
