From lettuce fields to labor leader.

Miguel Contreras is the most powerful union leader in L.A., and a risingstar on the national labor scene.

As executive secretary-treasurer of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, he has been credited with helping reinvigorate regional unions, stemming the tide of eroding membership and making labor a more potent political force.

But 20 years ago, he was about as far from L.A. power circles as could be imagined. The son of migrant farm workers spent most of his days in the lettuce fields of Salinas and Calexico as a front-line organizer for Cesar Chavez.

"Every day, I'd get to the lettuce fields by 4 a.m. to talk to the workers about joining the United Farm Workers," Contreras said. "The conditions in the labor camps were horrible. Some of the contractors were supplying drugs to the workers to make them work harder and to dull the pain of being stooped over all day long."

Contreras, whose family had been UFW members since the late 1960s, had previously done recruiting duty in Fresno and Toronto, among other places. But in late 1979, Contreras left the lettuce fields for the urban landscape of San Francisco.

"There are a lot of stories around about why I left the fields," Contreras said, laughing. "But the real reason - the honest truth - I followed a woman, one of the women organizers we were working with."

Once in San Francisco, Contreras joined the staff of Local 2 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees. The union was in the midst of an internal power struggle that ended when national officials decided to put the local in trusteeship.

Within 18 months, he had parlayed his role as a key organizer of a successful hotel-worker strike into his first executive position: chief of staff of Local 2. The new management team stabilized the union leadership, brought in more business agents (liaisons to employer supervisors) and restored morale.

Meanwhile, Contreras had separated from the woman organizer he had followed to the city and met and married a union co-organizer. Within a few months, his new wife headed a slate of candidates in another union election - and won.

By this time, Contreras had caught the attention of the hotel union's national leadership and was designated a point man to turn around local chapters around the country.

"In New York, the international union took over a local allegedly dominated by the mob," Contreras said. "That was really an eye-opening experience for someone like me who was used to battling growers and hotel owners. To be told by the U.S. Attorney's Office that we had to let some of our staff go because they were allegedly 'bag men' for mob families. I mean, wow!"

Contreras said he had no idea whether the allegations were true. "I didn't want to ask any questions that I might not like the answers to," he said.

He first came to L.A. in April 1987 to take over troubled Local 11 of the hotel and restaurant union.

"That local was in dire straits back then," said David Sickler, regional director of the California State Building Trades Council. "You had an old-line Anglo leadership that would not communicate with the newly predominant Latino membership. Essentially, the union was at war with itself. Miguel came in and really turned it around."

The very day that Contreras became the Local 11 trustee, an organizer who had opposed the old regime led a picket campaign aimed at Contreras and the trusteeship. Her name was Mafia Elena Durazo.

"She was a firebrand of a woman giving this passionate speech about workers' rights," Contreras said. "She denounced me individually. I then knew that if I was to be successful here in L.A., I had to get her on my side."

During the next several months, Contreras more than got Durazo on his side. The two dated and, three years later, they were marfled. (Contreras had divorced his first wife in the late '80s.) Shortly afterward, Durazo was elected president of HERE Local 11, a position she still holds.

Contreras, meanwhile, was building his reputation.

"When I first came to L.A., I instantly fell in love with the city and knew this was the place I wanted to spend the rest of my labor career," he said. "I thought I could make a change here in L.A., given the changing demographics. I wanted to be on the forefront of helping the unions of Los Angeles build the kind of relationships they would need with minority communities to make organizing successful."

Contreras' strategy was to borrow a page from the UFW and take the campaign for better contracts to the streets. The first HERE rally under his leadership was at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, a city not accustomed to union actions.

By the time he left for a union assignment in New York, the membership of Local 11 was growing again.

When he returned to L.A. in late 1992, Contreras put in a brief stint as political director for Local 11 before he joined the gubernatorial campaign of Kathleen Brown as deputy campaign manager.

That election also featured another issue crucial to labor: Proposition 187, the Pete Wilson-backed initiative to deny benefits to undocumented immigrants. Contreras helped organize the huge anti-187 rally in downtown L.A. in the run-up to the election.

After the election, Contreras joined the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor as political director, generally regarded as the No. 2 post. He played a key role in starting the successful push for a living wage ordinance in the city of L.A.

In the summer of 1995, then-L.A. labor chief Jim Wood became ill with cancer and was forced to relinquish his post. He designated Contreras as his successor; Contreras assumed the leadership post in May 1996.

As executive secretary-treasurer, Contreras has overseen a string of victories for labor, from the passage of the city's living wage ordinance to a series of major organizing drives that was capped earlier this year with the vote of 75,000 home health care workers to join the Service Employees International Union.

Contreras also helped get out the vote in last year's June primary to defeat Proposition 226 - which would have forbade union member fees from being used for political purposes - and the Democratic sweep that brought Gray Davis to power and returned the state Assembly to Democratic control.

"Five years ago, labor was not as big a political player in L.A., nor was it a major organizing force," said Kent Wong, director of the Center for Labor Research at UCLA. "That has changed now; in part that can be credited to Miguel's work."