Labor's new agenda: recruiting.

Following almost two decades of decline, L.A.'s labor unions are launching an aggressive bid to boost their numbers and their political clout - in Southern California.

Towards that end, union locals are engaged in a wholesale restructuring of their operations, shifting resources away from providing services for existing members and into actively recruiting new workers - an area which has been virtually ignored for years.

"We have to change the way we do business," said Miguel Contreras, executive secretary-treasurer of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, which represents 325 union locals throughout the county.

"We have to change the culture of unions. If we're going to survive and prosper, we have to put our resources into organizing," he said.

The effort is part of a national drive spearheaded by AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, who has challenged union locals across the country to commit 30 percent of their budgets to organizing.

This year, the national AFL-CIO plans to spend one-third of its $95 million budget on organizing new workers and industries - up from about 10 percent in 1996.

Locally, the county federation had devoted 2 percent of its budget to organizing in 1996, according to Contreras; the number will be in the double-digits this year and will match Sweeney's goal of 30 percent by 2000.

In shifting more funds toward organizing, the unions are demanding a higher level of activism from their members, who traditionally have relied on the unions' professional staff to handle workplace grievances, arbitrations and the like.

Sweeney says the emphasis on organizing is critical for unions to recruit low-paid service workers. particularly women and minorities, who have only recently been aggressively targeted by organized labor.

"It's time for a revolution in every part of the labor movement; it's time to analyze how we can be more efficient," said Sweeney, who will lead an organizing conference at the L.A. Convention Center May 14 - the fourth in a series of 13 regional conferences being held nationwide.

After the conference, Sweeney will lead a rally in support of janitors at the University of Southern California, who symbolize the kinds of low-paid service industry workers that organized labor is now targeting.

There currently are about 600,000 union members in L.A. County - a 23 percent drop from 788,900 in 1987.

Some of that decline can be attributed both to the recession and the massive changes that have transformed the L.A. economy from one dominated by large manufacturing and aerospace employers to one populated by smaller, increasingly service-oriented companies.

But the drop in union membership, labor officials acknowledge, also is the result of a culture within union locals that has emphasized servicing the needs of existing members over seeking out new ones.

"A lot of unions get bogged down with what they have without figuring out how to build power in their industries," said Mike Garcia, president of Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union, which has led the Justice for Janitors campaign.

Local 1877, according to Garcia, began changing its emphasis towards organizing in 1989, and now has about 20,000 members statewide, the bulk of whom are in Southern California.

Other locals are playing a game of catch-up.

This year, for example, SEIU Local 347, the powerful union which represents blue collar workers in the City of L.A., hired an organizing director for the first time and shifted 18 percent of its budget into building its membership rolls, said Julie Butcher, the union's acting general manager.

As a result of that restructuring, the union's members - who once relied on the local's professional staff to handle such tasks as contract negotiations and grievances - are now forced to play a more active role in advocating in their own workplaces.

"We're moving the whole culture of the union," said Butcher. "We're expecting that members become activists."

With a professional staff dedicated exclusively to recruiting new members, Local 347 is targeting public sector employees in nonunion cities in the San Gabriel Valley and Orange County, and hopes to boost its ranks from 10,000 members now to 18,000 by 2001, Butcher said.

Countywide, Contreras said he expects union membership to swell to one million over the same period - by focusing on workers in such industries as tourism, apparel as well as in the hundreds of small manufacturing shops scattered throughout South Central L.A.

"There are big industries out here that are virtually non-union," said Contreras. "There is no lack of targets."

In the drive to increase their numbers, labor unions are after more than just better wages and benefits.

A growing, activist labor movement - particularly one that is reaching out to the city's large Latino population - also will have an enormous impact on L.A.'s political scene.

"The future of the labor movement lies with minorities," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at Claremont Graduate School. "It makes infinite sense for unions to go out and organize. There's a deal to be cut there. It improves Latino clout and labor clout."

Indeed, a record number of Latino voters turned out for last year's election, propelling a record 21 Hispanic legislators - many of them with strong ties to labor - to Sacramento, including the current Assembly speaker, Cruz Bustamante.

In addition, labor and Latino groups were extremely active in the effort to pass the "living wage" ordinance in Los Angeles earlier this year.

The dovetailing of interests between L.A.'s labor and Hispanic communities has not escaped the notice of the labor movement's national leadership.

"I look on Los Angeles as the home for a dynamic and ethnically diverse labor movement," said Sweeney. "There are so many immigrant and minority workers that are dying to be organized. There is tremendous opportunity to expand."