Drive Launched For Political Contributions

Campaigns won't succeed without funds.

Manhattan home attendant Maximina Delgado

That is why 1199SEIU recently launched a campaign to sign up thousands of new members to the Martin Luther King Jr. Political Action Fund. No local union in the nation has a larger fund than 1199SEIU, but, say Union leaders, the times require that we do much more.

“I’ve been contributing to our Political Action Fund for the past 12 years,” says Maria Martinez, a home attendant at Queens’ Sunnyside Homecare Project. “It’s time for others to do their part so that we can all get what we need.”

Organizing new workers, helping to keep struggling healthcare institutions afloat, preventing crippling budget cuts and winning decent contracts all require political activity. For example, the Maryland/D.C. Region of 1199SEIU is in the midst of its Heart of Baltimore campaign, which seeks to elevate the status of the city by elevating the status of its healthcare workers.

The heart of the campaign is convincing elected officials and religious and community leaders to call upon healthcare CEOs to allow free and fair union elections for every Baltimore hospital and nursing home worker.

Although one in five Baltimore residents works in health care, making it the city’s largest industry, healthcare workers in the city make less than their counterparts in every major East Coast city. In their appeal to elected officials, Union leaders have stated, “It’s impossible for a city to maintain a vibrant middle class when its biggest industry pays poverty wages.”

“Others must do their part so that we all can get what we need.”

Through its consistent political action work, the district and its allies got the Baltimore City Council to unanimously pass a resolution calling on all healthcare employers to allow secret-ballot union elections. Its challenge is to raise the wages of healthcare workers while the city and state wrestle with a budget shortfall.

In recent years, 1199SEIU’s Massachusetts Division has set the pace for the rest of the nation for organizing new workers. Its political and legislative work has been central to its victories. As in Maryland, the latest budget proposal of the state legislature calls for cuts to essential healthcare services. The Division is tying its campaign to sign up new PAC contributors to the fight for adequate healthcare funding.

“It’s going to be very tough for us in New Jersey this year,” says Veronica Smith, a CNA at New Vista NH in Newark, NJ. Smith is referring to the budget-cutting, anti-union policies of Republican Gov. Christopher Christie. “I’ve signed up about a half-dozen members since the governor was elected,” she says.

Manhattan home attendant Maximina Delgado (top) and Newark CNA Veronica Smith (above) with daughter, Blessing, recruit co-workers to contribute to 1199SEIU’s Political Action Fund.

Besides her work in the home, Smith is a Union delegate, a college student and the mother of a two-year-old. She says the recent walkout of Newark high school students who were protesting budget cuts inspired her. “The governor and his administration care only for the rich,” she says. “That’s why it’s important for us in 1199SEIU to organize at work and in our communities. We need political action dollars to do that.”

Maximina Delgado, a home attendant at First Chinese Presbyterian in Manhattan, has been contributing to the 1199SEIU Political Action Fund for nine years. “When I started working in home care, I wanted to have a stronger voice,” she says. “And I learned that to get better wages, conditions and benefits, we need to be politically strong.”

Delgado has three grown children and 10 grandchildren. “I don’t contribute to political action just for myself,” she says. “My contribution also is an investment for other members and those who will come after us.”