FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 22, 2004
SEIU, Nation's Largest Union, Calls for End to Occupation and Return of U.S. Troops
Nearly 4000 delegates of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation's largest with 1.6 million members, voted unanimously at the union's national convention in San Francisco today to end U.S. occupation of Iraq and to bring U.S. troops stationed there home.
The strongly worded resolution pointed to military intervention aboard and attacks on workers at home. The resolution charged the Bush administration (backed by a majority in Congress) with responsibility for declining wages and benefits, deunionization, cuts in public services, crumbling health care and educational systems, cuts in veterans benefits, escalating public debt, and eroding economic, social and personal security.
The union proclaimed, "We cannot solve these economic and social problems without addressing U.S. foreign policy and its consequences."
It accused the Bush administration of using "deception, lies and false promises to the American people and the world" to launch a "unilateral, preemptive war" in Iraq, causing the death of thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of U.S. soldiers, and costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
The resolution aligned SEIU with the principles contained in the Mission Statement of U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW), a national network of labor organizations founded in 2003 to oppose war in Iraq and the Bush administration's foreign policies of unilateralism, militarism and preemptive war. USLAW has more than 70 affiliated labor organizations, including a dozen SEIU's largest local unions.
The resolution had been submitted by the SEIU International Executive Board for convention action based on resolutions submitted by Locals 49, 250, 535, 615, 715, 790, 1199NE, 1199P, and 1199NW.
(Full text of resolution at the URL above).