The State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC) advocates for North Carolina's state government workers. It recently cut ties with the national State Employees International Union.
The two groups had been affiliated for 15 years. But when the larger union sent its other members to a “Moral Monday” protest in North Carolina to push back against Republican legislation, it created a rift.
WUNC Capitol Bureau Chief Colin Campbell spoke with Ardis Watkins, the executive director of SEANC, about the decision to make the split.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
What was the reasoning for SEANC to disaffiliate from that large organization that you'd been a part of for over a decade?
Watkins: “So, our Board of Governors – it's made up of SEANC members who are elected from their districts all around the state – and they unanimously felt that, for some time now, we've been going in sort of opposite directions from SEIU as an organization, in terms of how we go about doing our lobbying work for state employees, how we view the labor movement in North Carolina. And it was time in their opinion to not be part of the same organization. There's no animosity, nobody's mad, but we feel like we function better as an independent association.”
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