President's Report

Bob Schoonover announces retirement from Presidency of SEIU Local 721, will remain as executive Director

While I’m glad 2020 is behind us, it confirmed two really important things for me. First, SEIU 721 members are courageous, committed and resourceful enough to hold our communities together in the face of the worst crisis in modern times. Second, these same qualities helped us build a union that fought to protect frontline workers when the White House refused to.

When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell adjourned the U.S. Senate on October 26, he doomed any chance of additional federal stimulus, abandoning millions of small business owners, workers and families desperate for support.

Everybody already knows this November’s election is the most important in a generation. The choice is clear: If we’re going to bring the pandemic to an end, get the economy moving again and start dismantling systemic racism in our society, Trump has got to go.

Nelson Mandela said “A winner is a dreamer who never gives up.” Wise words, because the fight for workers’ rights these days isn’t just hard — more often than not, it’s also long. That’s why having a strong union is so important, you have to have the resources to stay in the fight for as long as it takes.

Want proof that the workers in SEIU 721 are heroes? Most Americans have never faced a generation-defining crisis — Meanwhile SEIU members are tackling three of them head-on.

Working people in America are at a crossroads. The federal
response to COVID-19 has been a national shame. When the
pandemic first hit, the powers that be put frontline workers’ lives at
risk with insufficient PPE, delayed testing and a bungled response.

We’re 13 weeks into the worst crisis our country has faced in modern times. More than 100,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, the National Guard has been called out in 23 states and more than 40 cities are under mandatory dusk-until-dawn curfews in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by … Read More

Public workers literally are holding our society together, often risking their own health and safety to keep cities and counties running. While big corporations collect billions in cash bailouts, public workers across Southern California are on the front lines, often without adequate protection.

Thousands of SEIU 721 members — nurses, health care workers, Children’s Social Workers, DPSS workers, sanitation workers and countless others — are on the job, holding our society together.