On Apr 3, 2007, at 11:51 AM, Mark Rickling wrote:
> Looking at your time frame, on December 31, 2000 SEIU had 1,402,798
> members, while on June 30, 2006 SEIU 1,740,022 members. These numbers
> are rigorous in the sense that they're based on per cap membership
> assessments. Also, increases in membership are not the same as the
> number of workers organized.
Oone might greet self-reported numbers with some degree of skepticism. Various religious denominations always claim more members than show up in independent surveys. Still, let's give SEIU the benefit of the doubt - then 42% of the growth, rather than 70%, from 2000-2006 came from the homecare/childcare workers. That's not traditional organizing in any sense. And what was the growth by merger/acquisition? Any numbers on that?
Since much of SEIU's cred is based on its claimed organizing successes, this obviously matters quite a lot.
Doug