Below you will find the list of opportunities to serve on the SEIU 509 Unionwide Trustee, Joint Executive Board (JEB) and Chapter Executive Boards (CEBs). If you are interested in running for a seat — or nominating a colleague — please follow these instructions:
When submitting the e-mail, please put “Nomination” in the subject line.
To view the Leadership Vacancies document in full screen, click here.
Nominees who are unopposed shall be declared elected on that date. If offices are contested, election dates will be announced and candidates will be notified.
The SEIU 509 Scholarship Program funds educational scholarship awards for SEIU 509 union members and their dependents. Dependents are defined as children of members, or children under direct care of the member — such as a grandchild or foster child. These scholarships each range from $1,000 to $1,500.
Program Guidelines
The President of Local 509’s Family Child Care chapter, Celina Reyes, wrote a letter to the editor that was featured in the Boston Globe this week. In the letter, Celina responds to a recent story highlighting the child care affordability crisis in the Commonwealth, and notes that family child care providers themselves often struggle to make ends meet. Our recent contract win with EEC to raise rates for providers is a key step toward making sure taking care of the Commonwealth’s neediest children can be a sustainable career. As Celina writes:
That’s why I fought through my union, SEIU Local 509, for a contract with the Department of Early Education and Care that raises these rates; our members just overwhelmingly ratified the historic agreement. It’s just a first step, but a momentous one, as it will get us closer to ending the tension between our need to care for our own families and our work caring for the Commonwealth’s neediest children.
Click here to read the full letter.
509 educators testifying today in favor of expanding access to early childhood and higher education
BOSTON, MA – Educators and members of SEIU Local 509, the Bay State union for human service workers and educators, are on Beacon Hill today to show support for An Act to Support Educational Opportunity for All during today’s hearing by the Joint Committee on Revenue. The bill would provide much-needed funds to expand access to early childhood education and enable more young people to pursue higher education — both critical priorities for the Commonwealth’s continued economic growth and prosperity.
In order to fund these critical investments in education, the bill includes a modest 2.5 percent duty on private college and university endowments with over $1 billion in assets under management. Nonprofit private colleges and universities are not currently required to pay local, state, or federal taxes on their endowment funds. The excise — which would only impact a handful of the Commonwealth’s richest institutions — would create a new Educational Opportunity for All Trust to help defray the cost of higher education, early education, and child care for lower-income and middle-class residents of the Commonwealth.
“As an early childhood educator, I know firsthand that we badly need to invest more in the Commonwealth’s youngest children during the influential, early years of their education,” said Marites MacLean, a member of SEIU 509 who operates a family child care center in Fitchburg. “But more than that, I see that when we are able to help working class families access child care, it allows them to attend school and work themselves and further contribute to our economy and society.”
“There is overwhelming evidence that we need to invest more in both early education and higher education, but too often these investments are forgone due to scarce budgets and competing priorities,” said Tyler O’Day, a graduating senior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “Asking the wealthiest institutions to contribute a modest amount toward expanding access to higher education is a commonsense way to make sure all students can access the kind of world class education I’ve been lucky enough to pursue.”
MacLean and O’Day joined leaders from the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM) to share their expertise and testify in front of the Joint Committee on Revenue in favor of the bill. SEIU Local 509 regularly empowers its diverse, statewide membership to speak out in favor of key legislation that impacts their day to day work as educators and human service workers. Last month, Local 509 held its largest-ever Lobby Day at the State House, where union members spoke with their elected officials about the issues facing them as they educate and care for the Commonwealth’s students and most vulnerable populations.
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SEIU Local 509 represents nearly 20,000 human service workers and educators throughout the Commonwealth. SEIU 509 members provide a variety of social services to elders, at-risk children and people with mental illnesses or developmental disabilities — as well as educational opportunities from early learning to higher education. Local 509 is part of the Service Employees International Union, the fastest-growing labor union in the United States.
Springfield:
April 20, 2017 starting at 6:00pm -8:00pm
SEIU Local 509 office: 1275 Elm Street, Suite C, West Springfield MA 01089
Lawrence:
April 26, 2017 starting at 6:00pm- 8:00pm
SEIU Community Action office: 11 Lawrence Street, Lawrence MA 01840
Worcester:
April 27, 2017 starting at 6:00pm-8:00pm
829 Main Street. Worcester MA 01610
Parking available in the back of the church. (Rock-Salvation Pentecostal)
Brockton:
April 20, 2017 starting at 6:00pm- 7:30pm
Brockton Public Library, East Branch: 54 Kingman Street Brockton MA 02302
Lynn:
April 27, 2017 starting at 6:00pm- 7:30pm
IUE-CWA Local 201, Union Hall, 112 Exchange St. Lynn MA 01901
Boston:
April 28, 2017 starting at 6:00pm- 7:30pm
Nate Smith House, 115 Lamartin St. Jamaica Plain MA 02130
Big Wins in Settlement between SEIU local 509 and EEC for Family Child Care Providers
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Ficha de datos: Sobre nuestro nuevo contrato de unión entre SEIU local 509 y EEC para los educadores de cuidado infantil
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Aumentos a su pago:
PUESTOS VACANTES fueron publicados el 20 de diciembre de 2017; nominaciones serán aceptadas hasta el lunes, 19 de enero 2018.
A continuación hay una lista de las vacantes a la Junta Ejecutiva Unida (JEB por sus siglas en inglés) de SEIU 509 y a la Junta Ejecutiva del Capítulo (CEB por sus siglas en inglés). Si usted está interesado en una candidatura a uno de estos puestos, por favor siga las siguientes instrucciones:
Solamente miembros en regla son elegibles para ser nominados. Los miembros pueden nominarse a sí mismos o ser nominados por sus socios en SEIU 509 . El miembro de haciendola también tiene que ser un miembro en regla.
Remita nominaciones para las vacantes por escrito a Jenny Bauer en la oficina de la unión, vía fax (508-485-8529), email (jbauer@seiu509.org), o correo US (293 Boston Post Road West, Marlborough, MA 01752).
Para ver el documento en pantalla completa, haga clic aquí.
Otra vez, las nominaciones deben ser entregados antes del viernes, 19 de enero.
Los nominados que no tengan oposición, serán declarados electos en esa fecha. Si hay puestos con competencia, la fecha de elección será anunciada y los candidatos serán notificados.
SEIU Local 509 Members at the State House for Lobby Day 2017
Day of action culminates with rally on State House steps with workers and allies from across SEIU Massachusetts
BOSTON, MA – Nearly 300 members of SEIU Local 509 headed to Beacon Hill on Wednesday April 12th in a show of solidarity for critical legislation impacting human service workers and educators across the Commonwealth. From state employees, to private sector human services workers, family child care providers, university faculty, and mental health clinicians, SEIU 509 members united to advocate for measures that will improve the quality of education and care for the populations they serve.
“At SEIU 509, our unity is in our diversity – of our membership, and the people we serve,” said Peter MacKinnon, President of SEIU Local 509. “SEIU 509 members are meeting with their elected officials to tell their stories and push for several important bills that will improve their ability to serve some of the Commonwealth’s most vulnerable. Though our membership is advocating for a variety of needed legislation, we are united in serving the children, students, people with disabilities, and underserved populations we support every day.”
Bills SEIU Local 509 members called for include:
Following meetings with legislators and staff, SEIU Local 509 members joined members of SEIU Locals 1199, 32BJ, and 888 to rally against the extreme federal agenda. The rally took place at at 2:00pm on April 12, 2017 by the State House Steps.
Early-childhood education programs that start at birth and care for children until age 5 have a greater economic benefit to society than preschool programs that start later, according to a new study.
Nobel Prize winner James Heckman’s research has played an important role in establishing that high-quality public preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds can more than pay for itself over the long term, as low-income children who attend are more likely to live productive lives. It’s an economic argument that has persuaded lawmakers from both parties to support early education initiatives.
Now Heckman has released new research showing that the return on investment is even higher for high-quality programs that care for low-income children from infancy to age 5. Children in such zero-to-five programs are more likely to graduate from high school, less likely to be incarcerated than their counterparts who stayed home or enrolled in low-quality programs, had higher IQs and were healthier during the course of their lives, according to the study released Monday.
All of that taken together leads to a significant savings to society, the study found. The rate of return on the public investment in zero-to-five programs is 13 percent per year, Heckman and his colleagues estimate, up from an estimate of 7 percent to 10 percent per year for preschool programs that start at age 3.
The more comprehensive zero-to-five programs cost about $18,500 per year for each child enrolled — more than the average public school district spends per pupil in grades K through 12. But for every dollar invested, the program generated a societal benefit of $6.30, according to Heckman.
He said the findings suggest that policymakers could make a bigger difference in the lives of poor children with early-childhood education programs that begin far earlier in their lives, when children are just eight weeks old.
“As an economist, I always find it very odd that people only focus on the costs of a program rather than the benefits,” Heckman said. “This is very strong evidence for supporting this kind of program going forward.”
Read the full story in the Washington Post.
Mary Kay Henry, SEIU President
WASHINGTON—SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry issued the following statement on President-elect Trump’s intended nomination of Andrew Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants, to be Secretary of Labor:
“With the intended nomination of Andrew Puzder for Secretary of Labor, President-elect Trump has once again shown how out-of-touch he is with what working Americans need. Working families, including those who elected him, issued a mandate for economic change because they are sick and tired of working longer and harder than ever but still struggling to build a better future for their families. Puzder has proven he doesn’t support working people: he opposes raises to the minimum wage, even though every time Americans have been called to vote for raises on the ballot, they always do.
“Throughout his career, Andrew Puzder has shown he does not believe in the dignity of all work and has used his position to line his own pockets at the expense of workers. In 2012, Puzder made $4.4 million, a full 291 times more than the average food worker. He doesn’t support measures that would help families who work hard build a better life, such as the overtime rule, which would put more money in the pockets of millions of workers for the extra work they do. He wants machines to replace workers because robots ‘never take a vacation’ – even though robots can not ever replace the work that people do. He has stood with Republican congressional leaders who want to repeal the Affordable Care Act – even though his underpaid workers and millions of working Americans depend on it for healthcare.
“Working Americans aren’t fooled by the anti-worker Trump-Puzder vision for America. They know it threatens their ability to have a voice and to provide for their families. That is why millions of American workers continue to come together through the Fight for $15 movement to make President-elect Trump and his administration deal with our economic reality. Together, workers in the Fight for $15 movement have made the kind of economic change America is crying out for by paving the way for 20 million people to get a raise. SEIU members will not back down, we will stay in the streets to fight back against anti-worker extremism and we will not stop until all work in valued and every community in America has the opportunity to thrive.”
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