Our Purpose

SEIU Local 517M started in 1968 with the founding of the Michigan Society of State Highway Engineers, a limited recognition organization, whose members were comprised of both supervisory and non-supervisory highway engineers working for the Department of Transportation. In the fall of 1981, the non-supervisory state employees voted for the Michigan Professional Employees Society as the exclusive representative for all non-supervisory state employees assigned by the Department of Civil Service into the Scientific and Engineering Bargaining Unit, representing just over 1,500 scientists and engineers working for the State of Michigan.

Scientific and engineering bargaining unit employees ratified their first collective bargaining agreement in 1982. In 1987, MPES voted to affiliate with Service Employees International Union and became SEIU Local 517M.

In 1999, SEIU Local 582 voted to merge with Local 517M. Local 582 units included Saginaw County Community Mental Health; Head Start, Saginaw City Schools, Bay City Schools, Saginaw Twp Schools, Birch Run Schools and Buena Vista Schools.

Merger talks began with the United Technical Employees Association (UTEA), who represented the State of Michigan’s Technical Bargaining Unit Employees, and in June of 2000 UTEA made the decision to merge with SEIU Local 517M. This merger increased membership, putting 517M in a better position to confront bargaining challenges, budget cutbacks, and privatization issues affecting state employees. At their 2000 Convention, the SEIU International Executive Board made the bold decision to combine resources to build larger and stronger local unions to protect its members from the yearly “assaults” on wages and benefits. Local 517M became the Public Sector Local for SEIU in the State of Michigan.

This began the merger process of several more SEIU Locals in Michigan becoming part of Local 517M. Leaders realized the benefit for their members with more resources available, better training programs, a stronger political program, and the availability of full-time professional staff to assist in contract negotiations, grievances, and arbitrations. Over the next five years, the remaining Michigan SEIU public employee locals were merged into Local 517M including school and municipal bargaining units from Allegan, Battle Creek, Branch County, Detroit, Flint, Grand Haven, Hillsdale, Ionia, Kalamazoo, Muskegon, Plainwell, Pontiac, Royal Oak, South Haven, Taylor, Three Rivers, Watervliet and Wayland to name a few. During this time the State of Michigan Human Services Support Bargaining Unit became the third state unit to join Local 517M. Local 517M went from 1500 members to over 10,000 members strong in a few short years!