Hillary Clinton now has the support of nearly two-thirds of the U.S.’ 14.6 million union workers. | AP Photo SEIU endorses Clinton

The powerful union behind the fast food workers' wage movement endorsed Hillary Clinton for president Tuesday.

The 2-million-member Service Employees International Union approved the endorsement through a vote by its executive board. “Hillary Clinton has proven she will fight, deliver and win for working families,” said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry in a statement. “SEIU members and working families across America are part of a growing movement to build a better future for their families, and Hillary Clinton will support and stand with them."


Clinton now has the support of unions representing about 9.5 million union members, or nearly two-thirds of the U.S.’ 14.6 million union workers.

In a written statement, Clinton said she felt "deeply honored" and pledged to "stand with SEIU and fight alongside them—to defend workers’ right to organize and unions’ right to bargain collectively, to raise incomes for working people and the middle class, and to ensure that hardworking Americans can retire with dignity and security."

The SEIU endorsement may be organized labor's most important show of support for Clinton thus far. SEIU funds the Fight for $15 movement, which since 2012 has raised public awareness of low-wage employment and persuaded leaders in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York state, among other places, to raise hourly wage minimums to $15. (In New York State the $15 minimum, enacted by executive fiat by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, applies only to fast food workers and to state employees.)

“Their endorsement I think is very very important,” said Steve Rosenthal, the former political director of the AFL-CIO and president of the Organizing Group, a political consulting firm affiliated with liberal and pro-union groups. “They have a wide reach across the progressive spectrum because they’re smart and strategic and have huge resources.”

“With SEIU added now to the NEA and AFSCME and AFT and several of the other large unions, that puts real organizers on the ground that know how to mobilize voters and back it up with money. It’s a really significant endorsement,” Rosenthal said.

The endorsement comes only days after Clinton reaffirmed her opposition to a $15 federal hourly minimum and single-payer health insurance — both favored by Bernie Sanders — in a CBS News-sponsored Democratic debate. Clinton said she preferred a $12 minimum and the Affordable Care Act. Clinton has also drawn scrutiny from organized labor for having once sat on the board of Walmart, which vigorously opposes unions in its stores.

But Clinton has lately appeased labor in other ways, coming out against President Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership and calling for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s “Cadillac” tax, a 40 percent excise tax on expensive health care plans, many of them the product of collective bargaining agreements. She’s also appeared at several SEIU events for home health aides, early childhood workers, and fast food strikers.

“I hope that every one of you will continue to raise your voice until we get all working Americans a better deal,” Clinton told a convention of fast food workers in June. “I want to be your champion. I want to fight with you every day.”

Clinton demonstrated allegiance to the country’s teachers’ unions — one of the last remaining bulwarks of organized labor — in some recent criticism of charter schools and standardized testing. “I am hoping that there will be a president Hillary Clinton,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said on a call with reporters Monday. “… Charters are not an alternative system to the public education system.” In July AFT became the first national union to endorse Clinton.

SEIU’s endorsement may reflect the preference on the part of minority voters for Clinton over Sanders. Clinton has consistently polled better among African-Americans and Latinos. More than 40 percent of SEIU members are people of color, the union said.

Also likely weighing on SEIU's decision was that Clinton is widely judged more electable than Sanders at a time when unions face existential threats at almost every level of government. Twenty-five states have implemented right-to-work laws that free workers from any legal obligation to pay dues or their equivalent to unions that bargain collectively on their behalf. In Congress, Republicans are near-unanimous in wanting to reduce the power of the National Labor Relations Board, the agency that regulates labor-management relations. At the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito has signaled his eagerness to impose right-to-work rules on public sector unions nationwide. The Court will have an opportunity to do so this term in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.

SEIU’s endorsement also represents something like a personal redemption for Clinton, who lost the union's endorsement to candidate Barack Obama in February 2008 at a time when her campaign was losing momentum and bleeding cash.

An SEIU source said the decision to endorse came after months of meetings and polling that showed Clinton was its membership's preferred candidate.

In March, about a thousand SEIU members attended a conference in St. Louis to establish an “issue agenda” outlining the union’s political priorities. These included raising wages, ensuring the right to form a union, modernizing the education and health care systems, reforming immigration, and eliminating structural racism. Following the conference, locals engaged with their members on the endorsement process while the SEIU International conducted tele-townhall meetings and member polls. According to the SEIU source, these polls consistently showed Clinton obtaining more than 72 percent of union members’ support--a figure that's impossible to confirm because the union hasn't released the data.

The SEIU executive board, which approved Tuesday’s endorsement, is an elective body. Some locals, like SEIU 1199, are so large that they have more than one member on the board. Although the board communicates by phone on a weekly basis, typically it meets face to face only twice a year. Voting on an endorsement may take place only during a face-to-face meeting.

The executive board's action won’t please all members, or even leaders within SEIU. On Friday SEIU 1199 opted not to endorse any candidate. SEIU 503, Oregon’s largest public employees union, did the same.

SEIU 888 spokesperson Rand Wilson has also been among the most vocal union advocates for Sanders. His organization, Labor for Bernie, mobilized rank-and-file at SEIU and elsewhere to try to delay Clinton endorsements. But although the group rallied support for Sanders among union locals, it failed to make much headway with national unions. Thus far Sanders has won national endorsements only from National Nurses United and the American Postal Workers Union.

In an interview with POLITICO Monday, Wilson said he feared the union’s endorsement of a centrist Democrat would hurt morale and momentum within the fast food movement. “I think for organizers and leaders of the Fight for $15," he said, "this will really let the air out of the tires,” he said.