Is California’s most politically aggressive labor union finally playing defense?
A new ballot measure, filed by the California Hospital Association, targets large healthcare unions such as SEIU local United Healthcare Workers West (UHW), claiming the unions’ spending on harmful ballot measures has diminished the quality of patient care and threatened healthcare workers’ jobs.
If passed, it would require these large unions to take a vote before spending members’ money on ballot measures, as well as provide annual disclosures to their members on such spending.
It’s overdue accountability for the SEIU, and for SEIU-UHW in particular. In the past 13 years, the union has shipped north of $50 million in members’ dues dollars to ballot measures, many of them in states far from California. Meanwhile, the union has faced controversy after controversy in its own ranks, including high-profile allegations of harassment in the union’s leadership.
Allegations of worker abuse from a labor union that claims to stand up for workers is flagrant hypocrisy. But hypocrisy is standard for SEIU and its high-profile affiliates and locals.
Take Workers United, the SEIU affiliate best known for its Starbucks organizing campaign. Worker United has long billed itself as one of America’s most progressive unions, stating they are “built upon a foundation of social justice.” But that foundation seems to crumble when the union has a financial stake.
Workers United holds a 40% stake in Amalgamated Bank, which calls itself “America’s socially responsible bank.” That “social responsibility” extends to politics; most recently, the bank’s largest shareholder criticized the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) handling of illegal immigration.
A little digging from the Center for Union Facts shows that the bank and the union are playing both sides: Amalgamated Bank report financial holdings immigration enforcement contractors, with nearly $10 million invested in ICE contractors.
The bank’s Q1 2025 holdings report for the Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that it reports investments worth 38,481 shares worth $1.12 million in the GEO Group, which manages ICE holding centers. It also has 31,184 shares of ICE detention center operator CoreCivic worth $633,000.
Amalgamated Bank also reported 15,429 shares worth $8,115,000 in Axon Enterprises, a provider of equipment to ICE–including tasers–and 902 shares worth $27,000 in Cadre Holdings, which supplies tear gas to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection as well as ICE.
The hypocrisy on display from the SEIU has contributed to a decline in union membership, which is now at an all-time low. Last year, the overall union membership rate was 9.9%, according to federal data, with 14.3 million wage and salary workers within the ranks. A little more than four decades ago, those numbers were 20.1% and 17.7 million.
Membership has suffered even more outside of government employment. Only 5.9% of private-sector workers belong to a union. That’s also an all-time low, far off the 15.5% of 40 years ago and the 9% of 2000.
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While some of the decline can be attributed to a decreased reliance on the industries that have been traditionally organized, unions have been the architects of their own demise. They have become overly political, spending members’ dues dollars on political causes without their input, or practicing “do as I say, not as I do” behavior. It’s no wonder workers are then weary of having unions speak for them.
To add to the mistrust, union bosses often bully members, facilitating “a culture of fear among workers, making them afraid to speak up if they don’t like something the union is doing,” according to Americans for Fair Treatment.
So how can members and the public know what Workers United –and really all SEIU-umbrella unions – stand for when their public rhetoric and worker first mentality run in direct contrast to their behind the scenes investments? The answer lies in holding big labor accountable. The proposed ballot measure in California would do that, and hopefully will inspire similar ideas in future cycles and other states.
Kerry Jackson is a veteran journalist and member of the Investor’s Business Daily editorial board for 18 years.