Your hard work and dedication proved to be essential for our success in the highly contested 2018 midterm elections. Connecticut will be a better place now that progressive candidates have been secured for office, at least for the next couple of years. Union members and their families all across the nation turned out to vote for $15 minimum wage, the right to unionize, affordable healthcare, and in favor of ending the harmful hatred and division fostered by the Trump administration.

You volunteered to make thousands of phone calls and knock on thousands of doors, logging over 1,600 shifts of volunteer hours. We fulfilled our mission to raise awareness about the critical importance of this election. We saw a historical number of voter turnout at the polls for a midterm election. In total, over 700 of our members volunteered during the political events scheduled for this election to advocate for candidates who believe in paying living wages and respecting workers’ rights.

Today we celebrate together with our union brothers and sisters for a job well done, but we also recognize the hard work ahead of us. By exercising our vote and political will in this election cycle, we have demonstrated that we can not only hope to improve public policy and implementation, but that we can get them elected.

The fight is not over! “Now newly elected Democratic governors need to make it their number-one job to fight alongside the overworked and underpaid working people who voted them into office,” wrote SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry recently in The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/article/working-people-won-midwest-midterm-walker-rauner/).

Our union was the leading organization to impact this campaign. We will remain active in our efforts to ensure proper funding for the essential services that we provide. Holding elected officials accountable, we will learn from our achievements and mistakes so that we can have greater member involvement and impact on the issues of concern to us, our families, and those we care for.

In Solidarity,

David Pickus

President

SEIU 1199NE