Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ Photographs and Archived Websites
Call Number
Date
Creator
Extent
Extent
Language of Materials
Abstract
This collection contains photographs and websites of the Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ. The collection contains black and white photographs from the late 1930s and 1940s of strikes and group portraits of union leaders, as well as archived websites.
Historical Note
Service Employees International Union (SEIU), 32BJ is a New York based property service workers union, made up of approximately 120,000 workers (as of this writing in 2013). In 1921, a group of janitors formed the Building Service Employees International Union by William Quesse. Through winning two large strikes in the 1930s, the local had grown to 19,000 workers. The union was active during World War II supporting the war effort, they contributed $75,000 to the "labor war chest," ambulances, and a bomber, "The Spirit of 32B," to the Army Air Corps. In 1968 the union was renamed the Service Employees International Union and in 1977, the Local 32B union had merged with Local 32J. Today, the union's members consists of primarily janitors, property maintenance workers, doormen, security officers, window cleaners, building engineers, and school and food service workers.
Arrangement
The photographs have not been arranged by an archivist.
Scope and Content Note
This collection contains 29 black and white photographs of the Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ. The photographs document strikes, office scenes, the organization's headquarters, group portraits, and other events. The bulk of the photographs are from the late 1930s and early 1940s. Some photographs have captions on sticky notes or directly written on the back of the photographs, captions usually denote the names of the figures or describe the event. The collection also contains archived websites, the main Service Employees International Union 32BJ website and benefits website, COVID-19 related websites, and their YouTube channel and Twitter/X feeds.
Subjects
Donors
Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright (or related rights to publicity and privacy) for materials in this collection, created by the Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ, was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder.
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ Photographs; PHOTOS 256; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Identification of item, date; International Union, Local 32BJ Photographs; PHOTOS 256; Wayback URL; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated by Kate Ferranti, Deputy Director of Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ, in 2007. The accession numbers associated with this gift are 1985.018 and NPA.2008.032.
http://www.seiu32bj.org/ was initially selected by curators and captured through the use of The California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service in 2013 as part of the Labor Unions and Organizations (U.S.) Web Archive. n 2015, these websites were migrated to Archive-It. Archive-It uses web crawling technology to capture websites at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy, from the resulting WARC file, of the website. In 2018, http://www.32bjfunds.org/ was added. The accession number associated with this website is 2019.101. In April 2020, https://protectallworkers.org/ was added. The accession number associated with this website is 2020.025. In May 2020, https://protectallimmigrants.org/ was added. The accession number associated with this website 2020.041. In Spring 2022, https://www.youtube.com/c/32BJSEIU/videos/ and https://twitter.com/32BJSEIU/ were added to better capture materials related to the website after the main website redesigned. The accession number associated with these websites is 2022.047. In September 2023, https://www.youtube.com/@32BJSEIU/videos/ was added. The accession number associated with this website is 2023.078. In October 2024, https://x.com/32BJSEIU/ was added. The accession number associated with this website is 2024.059.
Take Down Policy
Archived websites are made accessible for purposes of education and research. NYU Libraries have given attribution to rights holders when possible; however, due to the nature of archival collections, we are not always able to identify this information.
If you hold the rights to materials in our archived websites that are unattributed, please let us know so that we may maintain accurate information about these materials.
If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material on this website for which you have not granted permission (or is not covered by a copyright exception under US copyright laws), you may request the removal of the material from our site by submitting a notice, with the elements described below, to the repository email.
Please include the following in your notice: Identification of the material that you believe to be infringing and information sufficient to permit us to locate the material; your contact information, such as an address, telephone number, and email address; a statement that you are the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed and that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and made under penalty of perjury; and your physical or electronic signature. Upon receiving a notice that includes the details listed above, we will remove the allegedly infringing material from public view while we assess the issues identified in your notice.
About this Guide
Processing Information
Materials were put in new archival folders with like-sized photographs in the collection.
In 2014, the archived website was added to the collection. In 2019, an additional website was added to the collection. In 2020 and 2022-2024, additional websites were added to the collection.
Revisions to this Guide
Repository
View Inventory
Archived Websites
Extent
Scope and Content Note
The main 32BJ website contains a blog, information on the activities of their political action committee, contracts, and campaigns. Also includes the website for the Building Service 32BJ Benefit Funds. The website contains information on health, training, pension, Retirement savings, and legal services benefits for Local 32BJ members. Other archived websites include initiatives etablished during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect workers and immigrants.
Also includes the Twitter feed for the Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ. Feed was initially captured to collect bargaining materials during the contract expiration of residential building service workers in New York City in April 2022. An agreement was reached to avert a strike. The feed contains news from the union and images and videos from events and rallies. In 2024, the Twitter URL redirected to a X URL.
Lastly, the YouTube channel for the Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ was captured. Videos date back to 2009. Video subjects include Justice for Janitors Day, apartment building workers, September 11th commemoration, member interviews, rallies, office cleaners, airport workers, security officers, get out the vote and endorsement campaigns, climate march, High Line workers, fast food workers, hazard pay, and strike and contract negotiations.
Accruals
New site crawls are accrued semiannually.
In 2020, https://seiu32bj.org/ was accrued biweekly. https://protectallworkers.org and https://protectallimmigrants.org/ were accrued monthly.
Appraisal
Crawl was limited to domains and subdomains of seiu32bj.org, protectallworkers.org, protectallimmigrants.org/, 32bjfunds.org, findadoctor.32bjfunds.org, legacy.32bjfunds.org, training.32bjfunds.org, health.32bjfunds.org, pension.32bjfunds.org, legal.32bjfunds.org in order to remain within the collection scope and data constraints. Facebook was blocked.
In 2023, YouTube URLs were changed to better capture the videos on the channel.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Due to technical or privacy issues, archived websites may not be exact copies of the original website at the time of the web crawl. Certain file types will not be captured dependent on how they are embedded in the site. Other parts of websites that the crawler has difficulty capturing includes Javascript, streaming content, database-driven content, and highly interactive content. Full-Text searches of archived websites are available at https://archive-it.org/organizations/567.
Externally hosted content
https://wayback.archive-it.org/6349/*/http://www.seiu32bj.org/
Externally hosted content
https://wayback.archive-it.org/6349/*/http://www.32bjfunds.org/
Externally hosted content
https://wayback.archive-it.org/6349/*/https://protectallworkers.org/
Externally hosted content
https://wayback.archive-it.org/6349/*/https://protectallimmigrants.org/
Externally hosted content
https://wayback.archive-it.org/6349/*/https://www.youtube.com/c/32BJSEIU/videos/
Externally hosted content
https://wayback.archive-it.org/6349/*/https://twitter.com/32BJSEIU/
Externally hosted content
https://wayback.archive-it.org/6349/*/https://www.youtube.com/@32BJSEIU/videos/
Externally hosted content
https://wayback.archive-it.org/6349/*/https://x.com/32BJSEIU/
