Sal Rosselli, NUHW Interim President

Throughout his life, Sal has been active in many movements for social and economic justice.  From student and education rights activism, to the Catholic Worker missions to help the homeless, to LGBT rights campaigns, to anti-war activism, and of course his labor activism, Sal has time and again exhibited a deep commitment to helping others.

In the late 1960s, he lived and worked at the Catholic Worker in New York City.  Dorothy Day was his mentor as he worked full time feeding and housing the homeless and other people in need. In the early 1970s, Sal went on to be a volunteer with Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a Southern Indiana project working with poor African American communities to help enhance their income.

At the age of 19, Sal was expelled from Niagara University for anti-Vietnam War activity. Sal worked his way through San Francisco City College by working as an SEIU-represented janitor in city office buildings. While there, he completed all pre-med requirements and intended to go to medical school, but was also very involved in the students’ rights movement.  His medical school plans were put on hold when he became involved in organized labor.

From 1980 to 1983, Sal served as a staff leader for the Theatre and Amusement Janitors Union SEIU Local 9.  George Hardy mentored Sal as they struggled against the for-profit entertainment industry.  To this end, Sal led strikes against Golden Gate Fields as well as strikes and a multi-year boycott of United Artist and Syufy theaters.

1983 marked the beginning of Sal’s career with SEIU Local 250, which eventually became SEIU-UHW.  He was elected president in 1988 after a bitter fight with SEIU International.  He worked as a homecare worker and a certified nurse assistant in Oakland nursing homes, and ran for SEIU Local 250 President as a part of a rank-and-file slate against SEIU’s slate of hand-picked staffers sent from outside of California.  Then, as now, the main issues advocated by Sal and the member slate were member empowerment, transparency, and accountability.

In 1991 he was elected to the SEIU International Executive Board and in 2004, he was elected a Vice President of SEIU.  Although he received a second salary of over $200,000 for his work with the International, Sal chose to donate all of it to local union programs.

Sal is proud of his time at SEIU Local 250/UHW, during which the union become the fastest growing local in SEIU, from 25,000 members to 150,000.  With this growing strength, Local 250/UHW was able to negotiate the highest standards in the healthcare industry, including a real voice in patient care for bedside caregivers, such as arbitration over staffing issues.  He led the union in winning landmark protections for workers at Kaiser Permanente, including employment and income security guarantees. 

In 2008, at the urging of rank-and-file members of SEIU-UHW and its elected executive board, Sal and the elected leaders of SEIU-UHW launched a reform movement within SEIU. Their goal was to stop SEIU officials in Washington, D.C. from making backroom deals with healthcare corportations, and urge them to respect the rights of local union members to bargain their own contracts and control their own future.

In retaliation, national SEIU officials began an effort to discredit SEIU-UHW’s leaders and pave the way for a takeover of the local union. (Read: “A less perfect union: at a time when organized labor is slipping, SEIU’s national leaders are wasting their time trying to discredit Sal Rosselli,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, April 8, 2008.)

SEIU’s trusteeship of the local union in Jan. 2009 led local elected leaders to establish the National Union of Healthcare Workers, and SEIU quickly launched a lawsuit to try to stop workers from joining the independent union.

In this video, Sal Rosselli explains what the trusteeship and the lawsuit mean for California healthcare workers: