A small group of sup­port­ers accom­pa­nied Fen­nell as she approached the stage where SEIU Pres­i­dent Mary Kay Hen­ry was sched­uled to deliv­er the keynote address. But secu­ri­ty guards stopped them from deliv­er­ing the let­ter and escort­ed them away from the stage. Lat­er, accord­ing to the Union of Union Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (UUR), a super­vi­sor told Fen­nell and four oth­er orga­niz­ers they had to fly back to Las Vegas ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing, at their own expense.

On Fri­day, Jodi Lynn Fen­nell, a child care work­er orga­niz­er from Las Vegas, attempt­ed to deliv­er a let­ter from a Fight for $15 orga­niz­ers ask­ing the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union (SEIU) to acknowl­edge it was their employ­er and to give them the right to organize.

As rough­ly 10,000 con­fer­ence goers gath­ered in Rich­mond, Va., to talk about unions and low-wage work, orga­niz­ers behind the nation­wide cam­paign demand­ed a union of their own.

Rough­ly 75 SEIU orga­niz­ers and oth­er field staff out­side of the union’s nation­al head­quar­ters belong to the UUR. But Fen­nell and UUR Vice Pres­i­dent Nicholas Calderon say that SEIU has told the rough­ly 100 oth­er Fight for $15 field orga­niz­ers who might be eli­gi­ble to join the staff union that it doesn’t employ them.

At first, Calderon says, SEIU main­tained their employ­er was the pay­roll pro­cess­ing firm that han­dles their pay­checks. Now, he says, the inter­na­tion­al insists they’re employed by the indi­vid­ual orga­niz­ing com­mit­tees that direct each city’s Fight for $15 campaign.

Accord­ing to Calderon, near­ly 99 per­cent of fund­ing for Fight for $15 orga­niz­ers, as well as vehi­cles and sup­plies, comes from SEIU.

“As we have said from the begin­ning, we are strong believ­ers in the Fight for $15 cam­paign orga­niz­ers and work­ers planned yes­ter­day’s action to try to min­i­mize dis­rup­tion while still hav­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty,” Conor Han­lon, UUR pres­i­dent, wrote in a state­ment to In These Times on Sat­ur­day. ​“We have no inter­est in stop­ping the cru­cial work going on there but do think it impor­tant that work­ers and com­mu­ni­ty allies are aware of how SEIU is treat­ing the Fight for $15.”

“We are dis­ap­point­ed that SEIU chose to esca­late and cre­ate divi­sions between work­ers and orga­niz­ers rather than act on our shared prin­ci­ples and beliefs about the fair treat­ment work­ers deserve,” he con­tin­ued. ​“Nonethe­less, the Fight for $15 work­ers will not be silenced and UUR will con­tin­ue to fight with them until they are rec­og­nized as SEIU employ­ees and get­ting the treat­ment they deserve.”

Fight for $15 orga­niz­ers have a long list of griev­ances against SEIU. They are wor­ried about the insta­bil­i­ty of their jobs and a ten­den­cy of the union to ramp up staff for one cam­paign, then shift only some of the staff to the next project. Oth­ers argue that because of the long hours, their rel­a­tive­ly mod­est salaries do not amount to $15 an hour by the time their pay is divid­ed by work hours, often much more than 40 hours a week.

But the biggest griev­ance orga­niz­ers express is that SEIU pays them to advo­cate for the right of every work­er to join a union but denies that same right to its own orga­niz­ers. Ulti­mate­ly, some work­ers say, SEIU’s posi­tion may under­mine pub­lic sup­port and open up lines for employ­er attacks.

Hypocrisy scars an orga­ni­za­tion, says Fen­nell, and could weak­en the union in its impor­tant fight.

​“We don’t have the right to join a union that we’re fight­ing for oth­er work­ers to have,” she told In These Times. ​“When we’re fight­ing for every­one to have $15 an hour, we should have it ourselves.”

Asked to respond to the Fight for $15 orga­niz­ers’ com­plaints, an SEIU spokes­woman wrote:

SEIU strong­ly sup­ports the Fight for $15 and a union which was start­ed thanks to the fear­less­ness and courage of work­ers liv­ing on pover­ty wages who spoke up, joined togeth­er and demand­ed some­thing bet­ter. SEIU sup­ports the abil­i­ty of all work­ers across our econ­o­my to join togeth­er in unions and have a voice at work to improve their lives and the lives of their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing orga­niz­ers in the Fight for $15. Many Fight for $15 orga­niz­ers are already union­ized and have exe­cut­ed col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments. Some of the region­al fast food unions whose staff are not yet orga­nized have reached out to inter­est­ed unions to offer a fast and fair process to deter­mine whether orga­niz­ers wish to be rep­re­sent­ed by a union. SEIU ful­ly sup­ports that approach.

The ini­tial orga­niz­ing of Fight for $15 focused on fast-food work­ers in New York but quick­ly spread to oth­er occu­pa­tions and across the coun­try. It includes work­ers in child care and elder care, ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion, uni­ver­si­ty research and teach­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, fash­ion and oth­er build­ing ser­vices, many of whom may move fre­quent­ly from low-wage job to low-wage job over their lives.

The cam­paign, almost entire­ly fund­ed by SEIU, can claim cred­it for rais­ing pay for about 17 mil­lion of the rough­ly 64 mil­lion work­ers less than $15 an hour, with 10 mil­lion on the path to $15.

Its progress has come main­ly from win­ning stronger state and local laws — not from any dra­mat­ic uptick in low-wage work­ers form­ing unions. That is true even in the low-wage indus­tries that, unlike fast food, were already often orga­nized to vary­ing degrees by SEIU and others.

Although the strat­e­gy for estab­lish­ing unions is unclear, Fight for $15 appears com­mit­ted to expand­ing the range of work­ers that SEIU is able to mobi­lize for direct action. Tac­tics include strikes at fast food out­lets and leg­isla­tive cam­paigns for high­er min­i­mum wages, whether across the board or piecemeal.

For the past cou­ple of years, the campaign’s empha­sis on pol­i­tics has increased, as illus­trat­ed by the choice of Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, for this weekend’s meet­ing — billed as the organization’s first convention.

The deci­sion to meet in the cap­i­tal of the Con­fed­er­a­cy also reflect­ed an inten­si­fi­ca­tion of efforts to link the prob­lems of America’s low-wage econ­o­my to con­tin­ued struc­tur­al racism with its roots in slav­ery. Fight for $15 must fight for both racial and eco­nom­ic injus­tice, SEIU pres­i­dent Mary Kay Hen­ry told the open­ing ses­sion of the meeting.

“You can’t have one with­out the oth­er,” she said.

Like­wise, you can’t advo­cate effec­tive­ly for unions, some Fight for 15 orga­niz­ers say, with­out hav­ing the right to join one yourself.

It is true that over the labor movement’s long his­to­ry, many unions have fought with their staff over whether staff could or should organize.

But a move­ment like the Fight for $15, which is found­ed on the right of every work­er to join a union, is more like­ly to win broad sup­port if it fol­lows the old adage: Prac­tice what you preach.

At a time when the labor move­ment is espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble, unions need to avoid any grounds that could cost them pub­lic sup­port — espe­cial­ly in a cam­paign as promis­ing and cru­cial as the Fight for $15.