Expansion plans: Service Employees Union exerts its clout.

ORGANIZED labor could be regaining some of its swagger, courtesy of Service Employees International Union.

SEIU locals took six of the 25 spots on the Business Journal's ranking of largest local labor unions. Of the union's 1.8 million members, nearly 15 percent of them work in Los Angeles County.

Topping the list is the Service Employees International Local 434B, representing nearly 105,000 home care and nursing home workers. In the third spot is SEIU Local 660, whose 45,500 workers are in private health clinics. And in fifth position is SEIU Local 99, which represents almost 29,000 public school employees.

All told, 180,000 of the 293,500 union members in the top five are with the SEIU, according to the Business Journal survey, which is based on data from the unions themselves and filings with the Department of Labor.

Now the nation's largest and arguably the most powerful union, SEIU has grown by following a market-driven strategy--that is, providing a steady constituency (or customer base) by organizing workers whose services cannot be outsourced and then going after employers, mostly local and state governments, more willing to enter collective bargaining agreements.

It's a national strategy that has been embraced on the local level, allowing the SEIU to focus much of its time and money on organizing or expanding membership in health care and government.

"They are stronger because they are aggressive," said Daniel Mitchell, a UCLA professor of management and public policy. "They see their mission as expanding, not just keeping what they have. They are the one kind of union that you look at where the new ideas are coming from."

The gains come amid continued declines in the overall labor movement. Only 13 percent of U.S. workers today belong to a union, down from a third of the workforce during organized labor's headier days of the 1950s.

SEIU has grown exponentially by developing synergies among the service workers it represents, even if the workers themselves do vastly different tasks. Organizing health care workers at hospitals, for instance, has given SEIU access to the janitors who clean those facilities, as well as the security guards who protect them.

"The more workers that are united, the stronger they are, the louder their voices are and the more effective they are," said Steve Trossman, spokesman for SEIU's California regional office in Los Angeles. "Clearly, we think that the labor movement needs to change direction. I don't know why other unions aren't doing that."

The focus on growth has caused some problems. Last August, 2,000 janitors in San Francisco disaffiliated from the SEIU in favor of the independent United Service Workers for Democracy because they felt the union was not paying enough attention to their needs.

Similar complaints by janitors have been voiced in other parts of the country.

Building beginnings

The union started as the Building Service Employees International Union, helping to organize a small group of janitors in Chicago, and was chartered by the American Federal of Labor in 1921.

Around the time of the Great Depression, the BSEIU became the nation's first union to include hospital workers and government employees under one roof. Its landmark success in California came in 1951, when it organized the Kaiser Permanente system.

Membership grew largely through organizing efforts over the next two decades in the public and private health care sectors. With such a broad swath of sectors under its umbrella, the union dropped "Building" from its name in 1968.

"They may not have seen it at the time, but the public sector turned out to be a good place to be," said Mitchell. "Unions shrunk in the private sector. The public sector tends to be more insulated. You can't get your government services from China."

The public sector is also easier to organize because it is less resistant to unionization. Unlike businesses, government officials don't face unrelenting pressure to turn a profit (although budget constraints can affect labor negotiations). Large unions also have considerable political muscle in Democratic-heavy legislatures such as California.

"They are very studied in budget matters and very plugged into the political realities of the world," said Jim Adams, chief of employee relations for the county Chief Administrative Office. "Through that all, they do a very, very good job of making sure their employees are well represented."

While organizing efforts are a hallmark of the SEIU, the union has broadened its local and national base through mergers.

Locally, that meant bringing in the Los Angeles County Employees Association, which became the union's L.A.-based Local 660, in 1971. As the public sector expanded over the last three decades, so did the chapter, whose membership grew to 45,506 in 2004, from 42,119 the year before.

A decade later, SEIU further reached into the government sector when it merged with the National Association of Government Employees. Another large merger in 1989 brought in the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees.

Still, mergers account for only 6 percent of overall membership. "We've been growing steadily since the late 1970s, but the really accelerated growth has been in the last 10 years," said Trossman.

It was during that time when then-SEIU president John Sweeney successfully ran for president of the AFL-CIO, opening the door for Andrew Stern (who helped run Sweeney's campaign) to replace him.

Stern, who took office in 1996, quickly called to increase SEIU's membership--and nowhere was that strategy better illustrated than in L.A., when in 1999 the union capped a $15 million, I l-year effort to organize 70,000 home care workers into SEIU's newly formed Local 434B.

At the time, those workers made the $5.25 an hour minimum wage and received no health care benefits. Today, members of the largest local in L.A. County make $8. I0 per hour and receive full health benefits for a premium of $1 per month (if they work at least 80 hours per month).

"It was the biggest organizing drive since the United Auto Workers in the 1930s," said Tyrone Freeman, president of Local 434B. "Every bit of our commitment was worth it. We changed peoples' lives."

A similar long-term effort was under way to organize janitors working in commercial office properties. SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign was launched in L.A. and several other cities in 1987, when fewer than 20 percent of janitors in L.A. office buildings were unionized.

Janitorial services were generally contracted out to non-union firms that drew its workforce from waves of immigrants who were willing to work for low wages. In response, SEIU went after both the janitorial companies and businesses that hired them with demonstrations, unfair labor practice filings and aggressive rallying in communities and political circles.

Commercial building owners, not wanting to endure bad publicity and the legal expenses associated with a protracted fight, relented to the union's demands. Today, about 80 percent of janitors in Los Angeles commercial office buildings hold union cards.

L.A. janitors, who were making the minimum wage of $3.35 per hour in 1987, are now at $9.10 to $9.95, well above the California minimum wage of $6.75.

Bigger bargaining units

SEIU's international office in Washington oversees nine regional chapters nationwide. There are at least 200 local chapters nationwide, including nine in L.A. County.

SEIU tries to create locals with at least 10,000 members each to enhance bargaining power. That's why the union is now organizing building service, public sector, health systems and long-term care workers in the South and Southwest U.S., where membership is the weakest.

"We're trying to expand to really become a national union," said Jim Philliou, organizing director for the international office. "We want to represent the majority of workers in our four industries."

In an effort to bolster labor's power in its regular face-offs with multi-national corporations, Stern last year threatened to pull his union from the AFL-CIO unless it consolidated its 58 members into no more than 20 mega-unions.

Stern has set out to build such a structure within SEIU by forming mega-chapters. In December, SEIU locals representing workers at Catholic Healthcare West, Tenet Healthcare Corp. and other hospital operations throughout the state combined forces to form United Healthcare Workers West, a 130,000-member statewide bargaining unit.

Today, the SEIU international office earmarks half of its $100 million annual spending toward organizing new workers, while the locals contribute another 20 percent of their budgets, totaling more than $80 million per year, SEIU officials said.

The money is spent training local union officials on how to make their sales pitch to non-unionized workers through means ranging from handing out leaflets to holding elections. Such aggressive tactics stand in contrast to the approaches of older unions, such as the auto and steel workers whose membership peaked long ago and are mostly trying to protect their current base.

Union Pride

L.A. is a stronghold for the SEIU.

Nationwide Membership: 1.8 million

L.A. County Membership: 275,000

Growth in L.A. County Since 1996:205,000 members

L.A. County Chapters: 9

Largest L.A. County Chapter: Local 434B (104,084 members)

Major Sectors: Health services, long-term care, public employees, building services

Researcher David Nusbaum contributed to this story.