Living in hotels and driving company cars stops being fun when you're in your 30s. I know far more thrice divorced organizers than happily married organizers. SEIU is a lifestyle, not a career. There is ZERO work-life balance. I had a director scold me once, "We work until the work is done," when I told him I had to leave before the 9pm meeting to care for my 4 year old.
The compensation is okay when you work for the international, but after a few years they want you to settle into a local where you usually earn less. The international national money is great because you live in company paid housing, but the money is woefully insufficient when you get dumped into a local and suddenly have to afford housing on top of running your own office out of your own car. When I worked for the local at the end of my SEIU time, I was regularly forced to take payday loans so I could put gas in my car and buy a sandwich tray for the next union meeting.
If you're in this to change the world, you're working for the wrong team. Every workplace malfeasance SEIU claims to stand against they inflict on their own employees. I watched a lot of good organizers get fired because they lost unwinnable elections and I watched a lot of son's of EBoard members win the easy cherry elections. I was routinely instructed to break the law as a course of my work, from trespassing to property destruction. They say you can't become a director until you've been arrested. I have this giant 5 year hole in my resume I have to fill with lies because no one will ever hire a union organizer in the private sector.
I came into SEIU early in the California Civil War. Over the next five years across half a dozen states I discovered that every accusation NUHW leveled at SEIU was absolutely true. I helped negotiate dozens of contracts. Never once did I see SEIU take seriously the opinions of the membership. Sure, we would send around surveys, but real decisions were always made at the highest level and handed down without input from the people effected by the decisions. SEIU will always have 1 person working grievances and 10 people working dues collections.
Go to SEIU for the training and get out and go work for someone more worthy of your time.
