SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana was founded in 2008, as a voice for quality care and quality jobs for healthcare, long-term care and child care workers. Members of our legacy locals-- SEIU Local 4, Local 20 and Local 880-- voted overwhelmingly to unite our strength into a single, even stronger union. Together, with the strength of 85,000 members, SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana is fighting to raise standards across industries, to strengthen the political voice for working people and for access to quality, affordable care for all families.
Our Divisions
Home Care
More than 35,000 home care workers, home care aides and home health nursing professionals are united in SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana. Every day, we provide essential care that helps keep tens of thousands of seniors and people with disabilities healthy and in their homes and communities. SEIU Healthcare members work as Personal Assistants in the Illinois Department of Human Services/Office of Rehabilitation Services, and as home care aides at agencies across the state that contract with the Illinois Department on Aging.
Since 1983—when home care was a minimum-wage job, with no benefits-- Illinois home care workers have fought for and won living wages and healthcare for home care workers, quality home care for seniors and people with disabilities, and to expand Illinois’ home care system to more consumers.
Today, home health aides in Indiana and home care providers in Kansas are joining the growing movement of caregivers for quality home care for all consumers, and living wages, healthcare and respect for the home care workforce.
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Nursing Homes
Nearly 10,000 nursing home workers are united in SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana. Together, we strive to give working people a voice on the job and in our communities.
Since 2004, SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana nursing home workers have been moving in new and positive directions, growing and involving member leaders as a progressive engine for change by tripling member leaders at worksites, launching a union-run leadership training program and building member bargaining committees that have negotiated some of the biggest contract victories for nursing home workers in the country.
These victories paved the way to unite even more workers. In the past two years, nearly 2,000 new nursing home health care workers have joined SEIU — making our voice for working families even stronger.
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Health Systems
SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana is the voice of more than 3500 health systems workers. Our members work in every department of the hospitals and clinics we represent, from dietary and housekeeping workers to nursing assistants to highly skilled technicians. Most of our work is done in community hospitals and clinics.
In addition to uniting thousands of healthcare workers in the Chicago area and Northwest Indiana, SEIU Healthcare has worked to protect needed services at community hospitals. We helped pass legislation to bring long-overdue funding to Cook County hospitals that are the only safety net for many uninsured families. We’ve held leading for-profit hospital chains accountable to the communities they serve by fighting for improved charity care policies and against racial redlining in healthcare facility planning.
As healthcare workers we are also part of SEIU Healthcare and part of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
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Child Care & Early Learning
Home child care providers across Illinois are united in SEIU Child Care & Early Learning, a division of SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana. Every day, nearly 40,000 providers care for children through the Illinois Child Care Assistance Program while their parents work or attend school. We share a priority of making sure that all Illinois children receive quality care and early learning.
Home child care providers first began building our union in 1996, when child care providers struggled to get by on low rates, with no benefits. Together, we successfully raised reimbursement rates for providers in the CCAP and stopped cuts that would raise parent co-pays and create waiting lists. We worked with child care advocates to fund quality care initiatives and to expand early education.
In 2005, Illinois home child care were became the first in the country to unite our voices in SEIU and negotiate a ground-breaking first contract for child care providers-- winning significant CCAP rate increases, incentives for training and quality care through rate add-ons and first-ever funding to provide quality, affordable healthcare for thousands of Illinois child care providers.
Established in 2009, the
Alliance for Quality Child Care is a partnership between child care centers and the Child Care & Early Learning Division of SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana that unites early childhood professionals to speak with a unified, stronger voice for quality child care. Working together with child care professionals, advocates and parents, the Alliance for Quality Child Care is committed to improving access to child care and early education for working families, to overcome challenges of recruiting and retaining qualified teachers and other in an industry where healthcare is rarely affordable and to build a strong voice for child care professionals to shape a child care system that works for everyone.
Nationally, SEIU unites hundreds of thousands of child care and early learning professionals in a movement for quality, affordable care for all children.
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