COUNTY LABOR CHIEF DIES CONTRERAS, 53, SUFFERS APPARENT HEART ATTACK.

Byline: Rick Orlov Staff Writer

Miguel Contreras, the Los Angeles labor chief who rose from the ranks of Cesar Chavez's farm labor movement to head one of the most powerful unions in the nation, died Friday of an apparent heart attack, officials said. He was 53.

Contreras, as executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, took control of the umbrella organization of unions and built it into a potent political force that today includes more than 300 affiliates and 800,000 members and wields enormous influence across Southern California.

Details were sketchy about what occurred Friday, but officials said Contreras appeared to have had a normal workday and reportedly had been talking with several associates and others regarding the upcoming mayor's race in which he had sided with incumbent Mayor James Hahn despite his long-term personal friendship with challenger Antonio Villaraigosa.

As an Airport Commission member and insider, Contreras has been able to win major advantages from the Hahn administration, including an $11 billion airport expansion plan that benefits construction trades.

Contreras - whose wife, Maria Elena Durazo, heads the union that has aggressively organized hotel and restaurant workers throughout the state - suffered from type 2 diabetes in recent years and talked frequently of the need to control his diet and get more exercise.

``The workingmen and -women of Los Angeles have had no greater champion than Miguel Contreras,'' Hahn said in a statement. ``Today, I lost a friend and our nation lost a remarkable leader.''

Contreras and his wife devoted their lives to the labor movement, she as head of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 11. They have two sons, Michael and Mario.

Contreras, who had led the labor organization since 1996 and had more than three decades of labor experience, was the first Latino elected leader of the more than 100-year-old group and had emerged as one of a new breed of labor leaders - as comfortable in the boardroom as on the picket line.

He pushed for the massive remodeling of Los Angeles International Airport while also fighting to make sure there was a living wage with health benefits for workers and that new concessionaires would be required to hire displaced workers.

Under Contreras, the county federation had some of the greatest growth of unions across the country as he won efforts to organize home health care workers and extended the reach of the unions into all levels of government.

Contreras' long background in labor began at age 17 when he and his family became activists with the United Farm Workers. He and his father were later elected union leaders at a grape and tree-fruit ranch, and Contreras would note that he worked with labor leader Chavez for nearly a decade.

Contreras would serve as a picket captain during the bitter 1973 strike with grape growers across California who refused to renew their UFW contracts.

In 1977, he became an organizer and eventually staff director for the 14,000-member Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 2 in San Francisco, helping coordinate a citywide 27-day strike that would be the first major hotel walkout in more than 40 years, according to a Contreras bio.

For 14 years, Contreras organized and helped rebuild HERE locals in Nevada, New York and Los Angeles, and in 1987 the HERE international Union asked him to place its 11,000-member L.A. Local 11 under trusteeship.

Contreras moved up to the top spot in the county federation following the death of another young charismatic union leader, James Wood. The two had worked to try to reform the union to reclaim some of the political power it had lost over the years.

Contreras took a political bent with the organization, working to position the union so that it could take credit for electing a majority of the Los Angeles City Council as well as playing a major role in the election of state and federal legislators.

He wielded power in a way that brought a new generation of Latinos to the forefront politically, both locally and across the state.

In recent years, Contreras had focused on revitalizing the labor movement and the federation said recently that its affiliates organized more than 100,000 new members in the county, putting Los Angeles in the top spot in the country in terms of organizing.

Four years ago, the union suffered a setback when its support of Villaraigosa for mayor fell short. This year, the union had been backing the re-election of Hahn over Villaraigosa, although Contreras acknowledged it had presented a problem for the union because of its long support of Villaraigosa over the years.

Contreras also had been attempting in recent years to move the union in new directions dealing with improving the education of workers to allow them to move into the new high-tech industries.

Rick Orlov, [phone]

rick.orlov(at)dailynews.com

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(color) Miguel Contreras