SEIU's History of Accomplishments
SEIU has been improving wages, benefits and working conditions for Canadians employed in health care and community services, building and property services, gaming, brewing, and the education sectors, to name only a few, for more than 60 years.
Originally known as the Building Service Employees International Union, the union established its first two locals in Montreal and Vancouver in 1943. Members at these two locals were mainly elevator operators, window cleaners, janitors and other maintenance employees in commercial buildings.
SEIU started organizing health care workers in Ontario hospitals in the early 1940s.
Many other unions tried to organize this sector, but with little success. Other unions felt they would not succeed. But SEIU thought otherwise. SEIU stuck it is out, standing up for hospitals workers, and only after investing considerable time and energy did SEIU form Canada’s first hospital local at the Toronto General Hospital in 1944.
Then it took SEIU hospital members another 4 years just to win an 8-hour day in their collective agreement!
SEIU has also made good on its investment in the health care sector.
SEIU expanded rapidly for the next three decades. The union has organized thousands of workers in hospitals, nursing and retirement homes, home care and community services across the country.
But SEIU’s accomplishments extend far beyond union organizing.
In the early 1980s SEIU helped protect nursing home jobs from outsourcing, won a pension plan for thousands of nursing home workers worth over $304-million in assets, and stopped the Ontario Government from passing a law that would restrict yearly wage increases.
In the 1990s SEIU made enormous strides working with the NDP government in Ontario to pass legislation that helped working people in many ways. Employees whose jobs were declared an essential service were given the right to strike. Employers were required to help remove workplace barriers and discrimination that hindered women and visible minorities from advancing within their organization. SEIU also won the right to sit on Hospital Staff Planning Committees to identify and propose alternatives to any action a hospital might take which would adversely affect the job security of our members.
In the mid-1990s SEIU took the Ontario Government to court after the Progressive Conservatives tried to limit Ontario’s pay equity legislation. This legal action pressured the government in June 2003 to commit up to $414 million in pay equity funding for 100,000 women across Ontario.
In October 2003, members in six independent Ontario SEIU locals voted overwhelmingly to form one SEIU local in Ontario – Local 1.on. One united local they decided would be more effective in negotiating with employers and the Ontario government.
In 2008, SEIU Local 1.on was renamed SEIU Local 1 Canada to reflect the local’s expansive growth potential.
SEIU has been a leader in organizing and servicing workers for over 60 years in Ontario and across Canada.
SEIU has the experience and a track record of dealing with challenging situations and will use the courts, labour boards, political action, media campaigns – whatever it takes – to secure and protect the rights of our members.
We are Stronger Together