The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is planning to cut 30 percent of its budget by Jan. 1, 2018, the end of President-elect Donald Trump’s first year in office.
“Because the far right will control all three branches of the federal government, we will face serious threats to the ability of working people to join together in unions,” President Mary Kay Henry wrote in an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek.
The SEIU will begin with a 10 percent budget cut immediately at the start of 2017. The union’s current annual budget is $300 million.
{mosads}“These threats require us to make tough decisions that allow us to resist these attacks and to fight forward despite dramatically reduced resources,” the memo, dated Dec. 14, said.
Henry said the union must prepare for the 2018 midterm elections in addition to the 2020 cycle, arguing that it must “focus our resources and energy on the fights that position us to retake power in 2018, 2020 and beyond.”
A spokeswoman for the SEIU told Bloomberg that it is preparing for “forthcoming attacks.”
“As we prepare to fight-back against the forthcoming attacks on working people and our communities under an extremist-run government, we know we must realign our resources and streamline our investments to buttress and broaden our movement to restore economic and democratic opportunity for all families,” spokeswoman Sahar Wali said.
The SEIU represents nearly 2 million government, healthcare and building-services workers and is the nation’s second-largest union.
Over the past few years, it has organized the “Fight for $15” campaign to increase the minimum wage.