SEIU endorses Hillary Clinton for president

“We feel very confident about Hillary Clinton’s capacity to fight, win and deliver for working people”, SEIU worldwide President Mary Kay Henry said in an interview immediately following the endorsement vote.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has won the endorsement of the Service Employees global Union, giving her the support of a labor powerhouse that backed President Barack Obama in 2008.

Sanders’ campaign also questioned the reasons behind Clinton opposition to his Medicare-for-all plan, citing support she has received from pharmaceutical companies.

Yet Clinton has always been popular among the SEIU rank and file, a racially diverse group with a large presence in Western states. She held a large event with union members in which she talked in detail about the particular challenges faced by the healthcare and child care workers SEIU represents and how she would confront them. The announcement won’t stop individual members from supporting other candidates, but it will refocus the energy of thousands of paid organizers and media messengers. The SEIU said in a statement that they have consulted with their membership extensively about the decision. The Clinton campaign, and now the candidate, has cast Sanders as someone not committed to raising incomes because of these tax increase.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon says in a statement that a 2013 proposal by Sanders in the Senate to create a single-payer health care system showed middle-class families would face higher taxes. Sanders could still receive another major local endorsement from SEIU 1199, as Cole Stangler recently reported that their executive council has decided not to endorse any candidate for now. The SEIU did not respond to requests for specifics on the polling of its members. Rand Wilson, a communications director for SEIU local 888 in Boston, told Politico that an endorsement wouldn’t change his own support, but it will affect how he can express it.

Sanders has earned a few support from labor, including a major endorsement from the American Postal Workers Union last week.

Many unions admire Sanders but realize that Clinton has a better chance of winning the Democratic Party’s nomination and want to build strong relationships with her and her aides early.

The endorsement also follows a politically positive week for Clinton, whose foreign policy experience made her shine in Saturday’s Democratic debate following the ISIS-led terrorist attacks in Paris.

“Thank, you, SEIU”, Clinton tweeted in response.

The union that has spearheaded the campaign to set a $15 minimum hourly wage for all workers in the United States yesterday threw its weight behind the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton meaning that she now has the support of roughly two thirds of all unionised workers in the country.