by Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, one of the largest and most politically powerful labor unions in the country, announced Tuesday that she would resign after 14 years in her position.
Ms. Henry was the first woman elected to lead the union, which represents nearly two million workers, such as janitors and home health aides, in both the public and private sectors.
Under his leadership, he launched a major initiative known as Fight for $15, which sought to organize fast food workers and push for a $15 minimum wage. Winning over skeptics in the ranks, Ms Henry argued that the union could make progress through a broad-based campaign aimed at the industry as a whole rather than individual employers.
Labor experts and industry officials cite the campaign as a major force behind significant minimum wage increases in states like California and New York and cities like Seattle and Chicago. He also promoted a recent California law create a council to set a minimum wage in the fast food industry, which will become $20 an hour in April, and propose new health and safety standards.
But the Fight for $15 campaign has not unionized workers on a large scale or allowed them to negotiate collective agreements with their employers.
Ms. Henry’s tenure has coincided with a series of legislative and legal challenges to unions, including state laws that roll back collective bargaining rights and allow workers to opt out of once-mandated union dues, as well as a landmark Supreme Court ruling that allows government employees to do the same.
Union membership has remained nearly stable during Ms. Henry’s tenure, while the overall percentage of Americans represented by unions has declined by about 15 percent. But the union lost mandatory dues for more than 200,000 non-members, causing a significant loss of revenue.
The union will select Ms. Henry’s successor through a vote of delegates at its quadrennial convention in May.
“I’m ready to pass the baton,” Henry, 66, said in an interview. “SEIU is filled with powerful, dynamic, multiracial next-generation leaders who are ready to seize this moment of labor uprising.”
The union’s second-ranking official, Secretary-Treasurer April Verrett, said in an interview that she intended to be a candidate for the top job.
A longtime organizer, Ms. Henry was executive vice president when the union’s board of directors elected her to complete the presidential term of Andy Stern, who resigned in 2010. She won the first of three full four-year terms in 2012.
Ms. Henry’s approach has sparked criticism that the union is too top-down in its efforts.
Organizer and academic Jane McAlevey has criticized The Fight for $15 for being too focused on what it calls “mobilizing” – that is, relying heavily on professional staff, consultants and activists to generate attention and shape public opinion – rather than building an extensive organization directed by the workers.
As SEIU became more involved in a union drive that an affiliate, Workers United, launched at Starbucks in 2021, some Starbucks workers said decision-making and communications had become more centralized.
In the interview, Ms. Henry rejected the argument that the union’s campaigns did not prominently involve workers, but said it was important to combine grassroots organizing with other strategies that put pressure on employers. Ms. Henry said the union had tried to invest in the Starbucks campaign, as it was doing in an effort to replace some of the company’s directors, to make it more comprehensive.
The union has also been a force in politics and political debates. Ms. Henry took the top job shortly after President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, which the union had rallied to pass. She pushed the union to defend health care legislation against Republican attempts to repeal it.
The union’s political gambles under Ms. Henry have not always worked out, as endorsement of Hillary Clinton early in the 2016 presidential campaign cycle. Many members later warmed to his Democratic primary rival, Bernie Sanders.
In 2020, the union took a different tack and set a policy agenda it urged candidates to adopt, which included making it easier for workers to bargain industry-wide and making big investments in home care and child care, including a wage increase for care workers. Joseph R. Biden Jr. incorporated many of the union’s ideas into his domestic policy platform on his path to the presidency.
“It’s an example of us taking stock and evaluating leadership decisions, drawing lessons and thinking about what we want to do differently next time,” Ms Henry said of the change in focus.
Still, major home care and child care measures proposed by Biden failed in the Senate.
Mrs Henry said the union was spending heavily on this year’s political elections.
“We want to finish the job,” he said. “We have goals in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, governors, state legislators and city councils, to make as many important advances as we can.”
