LaborForce Media | History Series | June 8, 2026
For years, many of America’s most essential workers were treated like background noise.
They cleaned office towers after everyone else went home. They cared for aging parents and people with disabilities inside private homes. They changed linens, moved patients, prepared food, secured buildings, answered public service calls, and kept hospitals, schools, airports, and cities moving.
They were everywhere.
And too often, they were unseen.
That is the story behind the Service Employees International Union, known today as SEIU. It is a story about workers who were told their labor was ordinary, replaceable, and quiet — until they organized and forced the country to notice.
SEIU traces its roots to Chicago in 1921, when it was founded as the Building Service Employees International Union. Its earliest members included janitors, elevator operators, and window washers — workers who kept buildings alive but rarely received the respect given to the people who worked inside them during business hours.
Picture that early world of work.
A janitor walking into a downtown building before sunrise. A window washer suspended high above the street. An elevator operator greeting every person in the building, but often earning too little to provide stability at home. These were not glamorous jobs, but they were necessary jobs. And SEIU’s early message was simple: necessary work deserves dignity.
By the 1930s, the union began to grow in force. A major strike in New York City’s Garment District in 1934 helped build momentum for the union and showed that service workers could organize even in industries where employers assumed they had little leverage.
That point matters.
Service workers often faced a particular challenge in labor history. Many did not work on factory lines where hundreds of employees stood shoulder to shoulder. They were scattered across buildings, homes, hospitals, offices, airports, and public agencies. Some worked alone. Some worked at night. Some worked for contractors. Many were immigrants, women, and workers of color. Their power was not always obvious at first glance.
But SEIU’s history shows that power was there.
It had to be organized.
As the economy changed, the union changed with it. In 1968, the Building Service Employees International Union changed its name to the Service Employees International Union, reflecting a broader and more diverse membership beyond building services.
That name change told the larger story. SEIU was no longer only about the people who cleaned and maintained buildings, although those workers remained central to its identity. It was becoming a union for a wider service economy — healthcare workers, public employees, home care workers, security officers, food service workers, and others whose labor held daily life together.
Today, SEIU is a union of about 2 million members in healthcare, the public sector, and property services. Its members work across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, and the union says it fights for a society where all workers are valued and all people are respected.
That is a large membership number, but the more important truth is what those workers represent.
They represent the care economy.
They represent public service.
They represent the invisible infrastructure of everyday life.
A home care worker helping someone safely get out of bed is part of the healthcare system. A janitor disinfecting a school or airport is part of public health. A hospital worker moving a patient, preparing a room, or supporting a care team is part of patient safety. A security officer protecting a building is part of community order. A public service employee helping a family navigate benefits is part of the safety net.
SEIU’s history asks us to see those workers clearly.
One of the most powerful chapters in that history is Justice for Janitors.
The campaign began in the late 1980s and became nationally visible in Los Angeles in 1990. Janitors were fighting low wages, limited health coverage, and the contracting systems that had pushed down pay and weakened standards. The campaign used marches, civil disobedience, community alliances, and public pressure to bring janitors out of the shadows and into the center of the city’s conscience.
The images from Justice for Janitors are hard to forget: workers in purple shirts filling city streets, marching past the office towers they cleaned, demanding that the public see the human beings behind polished floors and emptied trash cans.
Their message was not complicated.
The people who clean the buildings deserve to share in the prosperity those buildings represent.
Justice for Janitors became one of the most recognized organizing campaigns in modern labor history. It helped demonstrate that service workers could build power through geography, community support, and public visibility — not only through one worksite at a time.
That organizing energy spread into other areas of SEIU’s work.
Healthcare became one of the union’s major centers of gravity. SEIU now represents many workers in hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and home care. These are workers who see the healthcare system from the ground level. They know when staffing is stretched. They know when patients need more time. They know when families are overwhelmed. They know when the system depends on people whose labor is undervalued.
Home care is especially important to the SEIU story.
For a long time, home care workers were treated as informal help rather than essential professionals. Many worked alone in private homes, doing physically and emotionally demanding care work with low wages and limited benefits. Organizing these workers meant saying something the country still needs to hear: care is work, and care workers deserve respect.
That message became even clearer during the COVID-19 pandemic, when janitors, healthcare workers, home care workers, security officers, food service workers, and public employees were suddenly called “essential.” The word was accurate. But SEIU’s history reminds us that these workers had always been essential. The pandemic simply made their importance impossible to ignore.
SEIU has also become a major public voice in politics, wages, healthcare, racial justice, and worker organizing. In 2024, April Verrett was elected president of SEIU, becoming the first Black person to serve in that role. Rocío Sáenz serves as the union’s secretary-treasurer.
Their leadership reflects the modern SEIU story: a union shaped by women, workers of color, immigrants, caregivers, public employees, and service workers whose lives and labor sit at the center of America’s future.
SEIU’s story is vivid because it is not only about contracts or membership numbers. It is about visibility.
It is about the janitor who walks through an empty building and knows every corner of the workplace.
It is about the caregiver who notices when an older adult is weaker than yesterday.
It is about the hospital worker whose hands touch the care experience even when their name is not on the chart.
It is about the public employee helping a family through a difficult moment.
It is about people whose labor holds daily life together.
Some of the most powerful labor stories begin with workers society underestimated. SEIU’s history proves that when those workers organize, they do not only improve their own workplaces. They change how the country defines essential work.
The workers who were once treated as invisible became impossible to ignore.
And that is the lasting power of SEIU.
It reminds America that dignity does not belong only to the loudest professions, the highest-paid workers, or the people with the most visible titles.
Dignity belongs to every worker whose labor keeps life moving.
Union Supporter Spotlight
The SEIU story is especially meaningful for organizations focused on healthcare, family support, benefits, and workforce wellness. SEIU members remind us that essential workers do not need empty praise. They need practical support: strong benefits, access to care, financial stability, safe workplaces, and services that recognize the realities of shift work, caregiving, physical labor, and family responsibility.
Supporting essential workers means supporting the systems every community depends on.
Key Takeaways
- SEIU was founded in Chicago in 1921 as the Building Service Employees International Union.
- Its early members included janitors, elevator operators, and window washers.
- The union changed its name to the Service Employees International Union in 1968 as its membership expanded across the service economy.
- SEIU now represents about 2 million workers in healthcare, public services, and property services.
- Justice for Janitors became one of SEIU’s most visible campaigns, helping janitors win public recognition, better standards, and organizing power.
- SEIU’s history is ultimately about making invisible labor visible and showing that essential workers can shape the future of work.
Sources
- Service Employees International Union, “SEIU Homepage / About SEIU.”
- Service Employees International Union history overview.
- Justice for Janitors campaign history.
- SEIU leadership information, including April Verrett and Rocío Sáenz.
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