Joseph Bryant, International Executive Vice President

Joseph Bryant is an International Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Union. As a leader known for advocating for racial and economic justice, he has led fights to secure contracts that protect public services from privatization and policies that raise wages and improve working conditions for low-wage workers of color.

Bryant began as a rank and file worker leader who rose to lead his union, SEIU 1021. It was in his role as an Employment and Training Specialist for the City and County of San Francisco where he first saw the transformative power of good union jobs in lifting working families and communities out of poverty and hardship.

As President of SEIU 1021 — which represents more than 60,000 Northern California workers who make our cities, schools, colleges, counties, and special districts safe and healthy places to live and raise families — Bryant has elevated the demands of hundreds of gig workers, including Uber and Lyft drivers, for strong worker protections and has fought alongside fast-food workers demanding health, safety, and employment standards. Bryant also continued a proud tradition of broad worker organizing at 1021 by spearheading an unprecedented collaboration across California locals to organizing adjunct faculty in higher education and community clinics workers aimed at winning statewide standards.

Prior to his work at the City and County of San Francisco, Bryant was the Executive Director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a community-based nonprofit that promoted civic engagement and increased access to public services for San Francisco’s most vulnerable communities.

Bryant brings a vision that challenges all of us to work at the intersections of issues that impact the lives of working people. His leadership and character are shaped by his multiracial upbringing grounded in empathy. As a mixed-race leader, who the world sees as Black and who honors his immigrant Filipina mother who came to the US at 17, Joseph learned early on how to walk in other people’s shoes and build consensus across differences.