32BJ’s Essential Workers Help Launch SEIU’s Largest-Ever Voter Engagement Program Expanding Electorate with Infrequent Black and Latino Voters

 After Trump and Senate Inaction on Relief Package, Essential Workers Take their Outrage to the Ballot Box

 32BJ member volunteers aim to register 8,000 union voters in Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia

NEWARK— Urgent financial, racial and health crises are galvanizing 32BJ’s essential frontline workers to register 8,000 member voters in Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia before registration deadlines, with a major push through the national voter registration day on September 22. SEIU’s largest-ever voter engagement program will expand the electorate by turning out infrequent Black and Latino voters by combining digital organizing tools with traditional methods to connect with voters, including a robust paid media strategy in multiple languages.

SEIU’s $150 million campaign is expected to reach more than six million voters in eight key battleground states, where member volunteers will engage both union members and non-members.

“While corporations are rescued by bailout after bailout, essential workers are redoubling their efforts to ensure they won’t be left behind in November,” said 32BJ Vice President and New Jersey State Director Kevin Brown on behalf of over 175,000 cleaners, security officers, food services workers, doormen and airport workers. “This voting block of essential workers is driven by reasonable and urgent demands for essential pay and PPE because it means the difference between life and death, and financial stability and poverty.”

Essential frontline workers have been denied repeated attempts to receive hazard pay, while those who are laid off have seen their only lifeline of unemployment insurance decimated as the $600 federal supplement was allowed to expire. 

With over 175,000 members in 11 states, 32BJ SEIU is the nation’s largest property service workers union.