SEIU Member Activists For Reform Today - SMART Activities

SMART Activities

To voice its demands for increased union democracy, SMART members have mobilized demonstrations against local mergers and trusteeships, engaged in member outreach and awareness, and maintained a website for communication and coordination between service employees throughout the country. SMART has also conducted workshops to assist reform-minded rank-and-file members planning to run for local union offices. In June 2008 SMART members attended SEIU’s convention in Puerto Rico forming a delegation of reformers who gave speeches criticizing and questioning international union policies. Convention delegates representing SMART also proposed constitutional amendments opposing employer partnerships that limit rank-and-file participation in bargaining units.

Although reform-minded delegates did not have the numbers to win passage of their proposed amendments, activism at the Puerto Rico convention has sparked further interest in and mobilization for SMART’s goals. Since the convention, a growing number of labor movement progressives outside SEIU, students labor activists, and community leaders have criticized the international’s policies. While SMART members continue to work for a louder voice within their union and increased participation in contract negotiations over their wages and benefits, the internal reform movement extends beyond SEIU. SMART members offer a revisionist vision of the organizing model that SEIU pioneered—a vision that couples union growth with rank-and-file empowerment. As one rank-and-filer explained, “at this table, there’s got to be a place for a regular old worker who has worked for thirty years to grow this union.”