Time - USA (2020-05-11)

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shelter-in-place orders started coming down. Even
though she had only packed for a short trip, Henry
settled in with her spouse, Paula Macchello, who
lives in the couple’s home in San Francisco. Henry
now works both East Coast and West Coast hours,
embarking on long walks around the hills of San
Francisco with Macchello in the late afternoon. “I
don’t think we’ve spent this much time together
for 20 years,” Henry jokes.
Henry became the president of the SEIU in
2010, replacing Andy Stern, a controversial labor
figure who successfully organized new members
and grew the union during his tenure but also
sparred with other unions. Henry was seen as a
consensus builder when elected, and in many ways
she embodies the opposite of a firebrand male
leader; she listens carefully to workers, telling
their stories, speaking little of herself. “My expe-
rience is when people understand what the jani-
tor in Houston is confronting or what the home-
care worker in Santa Clara is confronting, a lot
of elected officials and many employers want to
solve the problem,” she says. She has expanded the

union to focus not just on collective bargaining but
also on raising wages and benefits for all workers,
including those not in a union.
This would not seem to be a good time to orga-
nize workers. Recessions undercut the bargaining
power of labor unions, and both states and the fed-
eral government have made organizing more chal-
lenging in recent years. Just 11.6% of U.S. workers
were represented by unions last year, compared
with 15% in 2000.
But this doesn’t daunt Henry. Even before
COVID-19, she says, people like teachers and tech
workers were starting to protest the widening in-
equality in the U.S. economy, even if they didn’t be-
long to unions. There are millions of people whose
situation has been made even more precarious by
the pandemic, people who have lost jobs and whom
the SEIU wants to bring into its fold. “People want
community and to understand they’re part of
something bigger,” she says. “That they’re not on
their own and having to fend for themselves in this
really unprecedented and sometimes horrific and
sometimes inspiring moment that we’re in.” □

‘We’re going
to see mass
organizing
the likes of
which last
occurred
in the ’30s
in the Great
Depression.’
MARY KAY HENRY,
on the response
to the pandemic

TOM WILLIAMS—CQ ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES

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