Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s largest and most powerful political labor unions, announced Tuesday that she is stepping down after 14 years in the position.
Ms Henry was the first woman elected to lead the union, which represents almost two million workers such as janitors and home health aides in both the public and private sectors.
Under her leadership, she launched a major initiative known as the 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 win through a broad-based campaign that targeted 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 that creates a board to set a minimum wage in the fast-food industry, which will become $20 an hour in April, and recommend new health and safety standards.
But the Fight for $15 campaign has not unionized workers on a large scale and given them the ability to negotiate collective agreements with their employers.
Ms. Henry’s tenure has coincided with a series of legislative and legal challenges to organized labor, including state laws that nullify collective bargaining rights and allow workers to opt out of once-mandatory union dues, as well as a landmark decision by Supreme Court allowing government employees to do the same.
Union membership has remained nearly flat, while the overall percentage of Americans represented by unions has declined by about 15 percent. But the union lost mandatory dues from more than 200,000 non-members, causing a significant loss of revenue.
The union will choose Ms. Henry’s successor through a vote of delegates at its quadrennial conference in May.
“I’m ready to take over,” Ms. Henry, 66, said in an interview. “SEIU is filled with the next generation of strong, dynamic, multiracial leaders who are ready to seize this moment of labor rebellion.”
The union’s secondary official, secretary-treasurer April Verrett, said in an interview that she intended to run for the top job.
A longtime organizer, Ms. Henry was executive vice president when the union’s board of directors selected her to fill 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 drawn criticism that the union is too top-down in its efforts.
Organizer and scholar Jane McAlevey has criticized the $15 campaign for being too focused on what she calls “mobilization” — that is, relying heavily on a professional staff, consultants and activists to attract attention and shape public opinion — instead to create a broad, worker-led organization.
As SEIU became more involved in a union campaign 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 claim that union campaigns were not broadly involving workers, but said it was important to combine grassroots organizing with other strategies that put pressure on employers. Ms. Henry said the union sought to invest in Starbucks’ campaign, as it did in an effort to replace some of the company’s managers to make it more integrated.
The union has also been a force in politics and policy debates. Ms. Henry took the top job shortly after President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, which the union had lobbied to help pass. He pitched the union to defend the health care law against Republican efforts to repeal it.
The union’s political bets under Ms. Henry didn’t always work out, such as its endorsement of Hillary Clinton early in the 2016 presidential campaign cycle. Many members later warmed to her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders.
In 2020, the union took a different tack, setting out a political agenda it urged candidates to adopt, which included facilitating industrial-scale worker bargaining and making major investments in home care and childcare, including increasing pay for care workers. Joseph R. Biden Jr. incorporated many of the Union’s ideas into his domestic policy platform en route to the presidency.
“It’s an example of how we take stock and evaluate leadership decisions, learn lessons and think about what we want to do differently next time,” Ms Henry said of the change in approach.
However, important home care and child care measures proposed by Mr. Biden died in the Senate.
Ms Henry said the union was spending heavily on this year’s political election.
“We want to finish the job,” he said. “We have Senate goals, House goals, governors, state legislatures, city councils — to make all the significant gains we can make.”
