Kathy Labriola was born in New Jersey and graduated as a licensed vocational nurse (LVN) from Bergen Pines School of Nursing in 1974. That same year she moved to California and passed the California State Board exam. Her involvement in labor unions started in the mid-1970s when, while working in convalescent hospitals in Berkeley, she experienced first-hand the low wages and unstable work conditions of the hospital employees and the anti-union stance of the hospital administrators. Labriola herself was laid off from her job as an LVN at Claremont Convalescent Hospital after attempting to unionize fellow workers.

A later job at a nursing home with a union contract introduced Labriola to SEIU Local 250. Her interest in union issues deepened and she eventually took on the role of shop steward. During this time, her disenchantment with the inner workings of the union grew as she witnessed the corruption and incompetence of the “old boy” network of union leadership. In an effort to bring about change, Labriola joined the Committee for a Democratic Union (CDU), a rank and file caucus committed to union reform.

Labriola became heavily involved in two committees founded by Local 250 members: the AIDS Education Committee, and the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee. From 1978 to 1988, as part of the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee, Labriola distributed educational literature, organized fundraisers, and lobbied the United States government for sanctions against the South African government. In her role as co-founder and committee member for the Local 250 AIDS Education Committee, Labriola conducted workshops and trainings with hospital staff on how to safely care for people with AIDS, and co-wrote AIDS and the Health Care Worker.

In January 1987 SEIU placed Local 250 into trusteeship, dissolving the Executive Board and the Board of Trustees and effectively ending Labriola's position on both. A year later, as a result of a merger between Alta Bates Hospital and Herrick Hospital, Labriola was one of a hundred nurses laid off from their jobs. At that point Labriola's membership with Local 250 ceased, although her relationship with CDU continued for another year.

From 1986 to 1994 Labriola served as a commissioner on the City of Berkeley Labor Commission. As part of her position she wrote a Labor Bill of Rights supporting workers in Berkeley, and was instrumental in representing labor interests in the Miles Cutter Development Agreement and in the City of Berkeley’s plan for the redevelopment of West Berkeley. Labriola also played a role in the Rank And File Committee Against The 2-Gate. The committee, formed in the early 1980s by rank and file construction workers, protested construction companies that created two separate gates to a job site in order to avoid hiring union workers.

Labriola attended the University of California at Berkeley and in 1980 was awarded a B.A. in Comparative Government. Her honors thesis was titled The Influence of Feminism on American Women in the 1970s. Labriola currently works as a counselor in Berkeley, California.

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 250 (now SEIU UHW) is the oldest union representing healthcare workers in the United States. Started in 1934 by a group of service workers at San Francisco General, a publicly owned hospital, they were successful in their ability to unite and fight for higher wages. At that time there was no national union representing hospital workers and it wasn’t until three years later that the local got a new charter from the Building Service Employees International Union, becoming BSEIU Local 250. In 1968 BSEIU changed its name to the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU.

In 1936, The City and County of San Francisco passed an ordinance stating that wages set at private hospitals in the city would determine the wage rate for workers at San Francisco General. This led to the first organization of workers in private nonprofit hospitals, including Franklin Hospital (renamed the Ralph K. Davies Medical Center in 1971 and now known as California Pacific Medical Center’s Davies Campus), French Hospital, St. Francis Hospital, St. Luke’s Hospital (now St. Luke’s Campus of California Pacific Medical Center) and Dante Hospital. With support from sister SEIUs and the San Francisco Labor Council, Local 250 was able to garner enough public support and membership to introduce a collective bargaining agreement just one year later.

In 1941, the Local 250 won a significant victory when it signed its first master agreement covering 11 private nonprofit hospitals in San Francisco. The addition of a grievance procedure, which contained binding arbitration and a non-discriminatory policy against workers who joined the union, provided protection for members in the workplace and allowed the union to negotiate more forcefully with management. By the early 1950s, Local 250 had expanded their union to include the entire Bay Area, and successfully negotiating master agreements with both Associated Hospitals of the East Bay and Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Project.

For the next few decades the union continued to fight for better working conditions at Bay Area hospitals, winning its members increased wages, an employee-paid health and welfare plan, a retirement plan, a job classification and seniority system, and a labor management trust fund used to provide unemployment insurance for hospital workers. Local 250 further expanded to organize workers in convalescent facilities, starting with master agreements for three nursing home chains: Hillhaven Corporation, Hacienda, and National Health Enterprises. Convalescent care workers soon formed a substantial part of the union’s membership.

In 2004, Local 250 in Northern California and Local 399 in Southern California merged to form SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW). SEIU-UHW currently represents 150,000 healthcare workers in hospitals and nursing homes, as well as home care providers serving the senior population and people with disabilities.