Poised for a Strike, County Union Turning to TV Ads.

Service Employees International Union Local 660's current broadcast advertising campaign is testament to the fact that unions -- and more importantly, their members -- have come to recognize the importance of public relations.

The union, which represents 47,000 county workers, is poised to strike when its present contract expires Sept. 29. If that happens, the usual spate of street demonstrations, sit-ins and the like are on the menu. And L.A. County's hapless residents, already facing the headache of a transit strike, may face the loss of other county services.

To keep the public on its side, SEIU is airing a series of television and radio spots at a cost of $750,000.

When asked if the money might not be better spent on something like a fund to tide workers over in the event of a strike, union Assistant General Manager Bart Diener said only that the appropriation had been approved by SEIU's membership.

Unions like SEIU appear to be getting more sophisticated about using the political process to their advantage. Diener pointed to this spring's janitors' strike, during which sister Local 1877 enlisted the help of political figures such as Vice President Al Gore, Mayor Richard Riordan and then-Speaker of the Assembly Antonio Villaraigosa, as well as celebrities from the worlds of film and television.

That labor action was widely considered a victory for SETU, especially within the union movement.

"It wasn't the janitors' ability to disrupt services at the buildings they worked that made a difference," Diener said. "It was the fact that public opinion was on their side."

Showing the human side

Local 660 is betting that the county supervisors are more susceptible to public pressure than are the cleaning contractors targeted during the janitorial conflict. "We believe the Board of Supervisors will be sensitive to being portrayed as the bad guys," Diener said.

The commercials begin by portraying county workers as, "L.A.'s everyday heroes." They seek to create a connection between viewers and county workers with lines like, "L.A. County librarians open doors of learning, but can't afford college for their own kids."

The responsibility for this state of affairs is then laid at the Board of Supervisors' doorstep, with the commercials claiming the board "won't pay these everyday heroes a living wage."

"The point of the campaign is that if we're going on strike and disrupting services, we want the public to know who we are and why we're committed to a fair share for L.A.'s working families," Diener said.

The 30-second television spots and 60-second radio commercials began airing Sept. 14. Targeted at "opinion-makers," the ads are running on radio talk shows, all-news programs and "intellectual" TV shows such as "The Practice" and "Law and Order," Diener said.

If the ads fail to move public officials on the issues important to Local 660, primarily wages and benefits, a second set of more negative spots has been prepared. These, Diener said, highlight the fact that supervisors will each be enjoying pay increases totaling $15,000 over the next year.

In fact, the supervisors, who were each earning $117,000 per annum, received an increase to $122,628 on Sept. 1 and are set to get another in January 2001, elevating their salary to $133,000 a year, according to county spokeswoman Judy Hammond.

Local 660 hired New York-based Bynum Consulting Group to produce the spots. Because of the ongoing strike by commercial performers, the ads' images were culled from stock footage of working people. That measure also saved some money.

Court of public opinion

Archie Kleingartner, professor of management and policy study at UCLA, said it's not unusual for unions to appeal to the public in advance of a possible strike. "Public-sector unions have always felt the fate of their demands lies in the court of public opinion. It's not a popular thing for them to strike," he said.

Professor Daniel B. Mitchell, a specialist in labor relations at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, agreed. "Who is the ultimate manager? There's a negotiator, and above them there's a political establishment, and above that is the general public who voted them into office. Going over the heads of public officials is characteristic of public-sector bargaining."

On the other hand, few unions in the past have taken such a high-cost approach as buying television commercials.

"That's a lot of money," Mitchell said, when told the union is spending $750,000 on the campaign. "Maybe they figure people don't read the newspapers anymore and broadcasting is the way to go."

Meanwhile, despite the high price tag of the campaign, some marketing analysts wonder if it will really be enough to have an impact.

Jack Feuer, media editor of Adweek magazine, said that if SEIU wants to actually persuade the public about its point of view, the ads would probably have to run longer than the three weeks leading up to the strike deadline. Diener said plans call for the ads to run through the first week in October.