Service union raises workers' pay, hopes

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070902/BUSINESS06/709020683

LOW-LEVEL LABORERS GAIN STRENGTH
Service union raises workers' pay, hopes

September 2, 2007

BY MARGARITA BAUZA


FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

For four years, Maria Mercado scratched by on help from family as she cared for her mother, who had an aneurysm while visiting Detroit from Mexico.

Today, Mercado still cares for her mother full time, but her conditions have improved. She's being paid by the state for her work, is taking classes to get her general equivalency diploma and hopes to regain the health insurance she lost after she quit her job at a steel plant when her mother fell ill in 2003.

China Burgess, 50, of Detroit, left, and David Smith, 53, of Detroit are SEIU workers who receive free GED classes offered by the nonprofit Cassie Stern Healthcare Workers Education and Training Center.

This Labor Day weekend, Mercado, 40, credits those life improvements to joining the Service Employees International Union, the fastest-growing labor union in North America, with nearly 1.9 million workers in health care and janitorial and public services.

The union helped her get more pay, sponsors the GED classes and works on insurance for home-care workers.

As manufacturing jobs and membership in unions like the UAW decline, service jobs have exploded and so has membership in service such unions as the SEIU.

It is this segment of the workforce that needs the traditional protection of labor unions, said Michigan State University labor relations professor Ellen Kossek. Its members work the worst hours for the least pay in the poorest conditions.

FULL story & photo at link.