Keith Kelleher is a retired OG union organizer who spent 39 years working with and for Black, Brown, indigenous, and white women who taught him valuable lessons while building a union of over 90,000 workers.

Keith Kelleher was a founder and president of SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana Missouri/Kansas(HCIIMK), representing over 91,000 homecare, childcare, nursing home, and other healthcare workers. HCIIMK is the largest local union in Chicago, Cook County, the state of Illinois, and the Midwest, as well as the 7th largest local of the two million-member SEIU.

Prior to leading SEIU HCIIMK, Keith was the founder and Head Organizer of ULU, later SEIU, Local 880. Under his leadership, the local pioneered the organization of home care, child care, and other low-wage workers, growing the local from just 7 members in 1983 to over 70,000 members by 2008, and winning living wages and first-ever healthcare and other benefits for tens of thousands of Illinois workers.

From 1996 to 98, Keith also headed SEIU’s Homecare Task Force, which greatly expanded SEIU’s national homecare organizing from just a handful of states with fewer than 50,000 homecare members to over a dozen states with hundreds of thousands of homecare workers. Today, because of this groundbreaking work - and that of many organizers and leaders - SEIU now represents over 750,000 homecare workers.

In addition, SEIU represents over 100,000 home childcare workers through a unique community-labor organizing model pioneered by 880.

Today, almost one-third of the two million workers SEIU represents is a homecare or home childcare provider.

Keith began labor organizing with ACORN’s United Labor Unions (ULU) in Detroit and Chicago before it merged with SEIU in 1985. Before that, he had been an ACORN member and community organizer in Detroit.

Keith was given a ride to his first ACORN neighborhood meeting in Detroit in 1979 by Madeline Talbott and they’ve been organizing partners and the proud parents of Aileen and Ryan - and later Ana - ever since.

IN THE NEWS

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY

The Ben Joravsky Show, Keith Kelleher on Amazon in Alabama

Chicago Tribune, Executive Profile: Keith Kelleher

Daily Journal, Child Care Workers Join Forces with SEIU

Chicago Tribune, Local 880: Labor's New Up-and-Comer

In These Times, SEIU State Council Reverses Course, Endorses Jesus “Chuy” Garcia’s Run Against Rahm Emanuel

Chicago Tribune, Union for Child-Care Workers

MY EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN