SEIU ULTCW President Laphonza Butler (click image for larger version)
Laphonza Butler is the President of SEIU ULTCW – the United Long Term Care Workers’ Union, which represents 180,000 in-home caregivers and nursing home workers across California. Butler brings to her position years of experience working to improve the lives of members by successfully running strategic organizing campaigns, forming alliances with community and political allies, and partnering with other unions to build workers’ strength.
Butler has played an important role in shaping the labor movement’s strategy for organizing the newly emergent multi-national, multi-service corporations such as Sodexho, Compass, and Aramark. In response to the outsourcing of millions of food service jobs, SEIU and Unite Here joined forces to form Service Workers United to organize and represent food service workers. As secretary-treasurer, Butler has been a part of uniting 25,000 foodservice workers around the country in a virtually non-union industry.
Most recently, she served as SEIU’s Property Services division director, responsible for the strategic direction of the more than 250,000 janitors, security officers, window cleaners, and food service workers across the country. Prior to that, Butler directed the national Stand for Security campaign that reached collective bargaining agreements for 20,000 security officers in nine major cities across the United States and well as organizing agreements with the London-based Wackenhut Corporation. As the organizing director of SEIU 1199 Maryland, she organized and bargained collective bargaining agreements to represent hospital and nursing home workers in facilities like Johns Hopkins Hospital.
A proud native of the south, Butler is a graduate of Jackson State University, in Jackson, MS.
