Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO), June 5, 2006, Monday

Copyright 2006 Denver Publishing Company
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)

June 5, 2006 Monday
Final Edition

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5A


HEADLINE: Service workers demand their voice be heard;
Union has spoken out for immigrant rights, needs outside workplace

BYLINE: Myung Oak Kim, Rocky Mountain News\ Staff writer Burt Hubbard contributed to this report.

BODY:
Twenty years ago, janitor Monica Martinez was so shy that she hid behind a sign during her first union picket outside a downtown Denver office building.
Five weeks ago, the 61-year-old Montbello woman stood on the steps of the state Capitol and told 75,000 protesters that all immigrants have dreams and deserve to be treated with dignity.
When she's not cleaning floors at Denver International Airport, Martinez sits on the executive board of Service Employees International Union Local 105, a labor powerhouse that has put itself at the center of the hottest issue in the country - immigration.
"The union has the power to organize and to move us forward," she said through a translator. "We're not just members of the union. We're part of a very strong movement."
Martinez, who grew up in Mexico, symbolizes the evolution of the fastest-growing union in Colorado and the country. SEIU says it represents 5,300 health care workers and janitors in Colorado and 1.8 million nationwide.
The international union broke off from the AFL-CIO last summer in a disagreement over organizing tactics and financial priorities. SEIU has focused much of its energy on recruiting immigrants and advocating vociferously for their needs outside of the workplace.
That's why SEIU, with its signature purple logo, has been a prominent supporter and organizer of the recent wave of rallies and marches in Denver and elsewhere advocating for citizenship for illegal immigrants.
A heavy political contributor, the local union says it also will be a major player in the November elections. It plans to spend more than $500,000 supporting pro-immigrant, pro-labor candidates in Colorado and fighting a proposed ballot initiative that would deny most government services to illegal immigrants.
'A more just society'
SEIU pursues the traditional labor agenda: better wages, working conditions and health benefits. But it also wants to "lead the way to a more just and humane society," said local SEIU President Mitch Ackerman.
The social justice mission has drawn fire amid a heated national debate over what to do with the country's estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants. The issue has divided numerous groups, including unions.
SEIU's leadership role in Colorado immigrant advocacy has also drawn criticism. The union helped lead the drive for the recent immigrant marches despite warnings from political consultants and Hispanic community leaders that the demonstrations were causing negative public sentiment.
Some labor experts and advocates of stricter enforcement of immigration laws say the union is encouraging illegal immigration by helping people who sneak across the border get better-paying jobs with benefits. They question how a union can effectively fight for all its members when some of them compete with the influx of illegal immigrants who will work for less and tolerate worse working conditions.
If national union leaders like Jimmy Hoffa were still alive, "They would be in shock that these unions are doing what they're doing today," said Waldo Benavidez, a social service center director and former union leader who is helping to lead the illegal immigrant ballot initiative.
"They're aiding and abetting employment of illegals in this country, which hurts the working man, which they are supposed to be representing."
Vernon Briggs, a labor economist at Cornell University who wrote a 2001 book called Immigration and American Unionism, said unions have no say over who's hired for a job. In the case of SEIU's membership, significant numbers of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Latin America are cleaning offices and changing hotel beds.
Still, Briggs contends that SEIU's tactic of pursuing immigrant workers is a bad idea.
"I think it's like taking a shortcut through quicksand," he said. "As long as you're pushing for a lax immigration policy, you're simply undercutting the interest of American workers."
Ackerman, 37, acknowledged that some of his members disagree with the immigration agenda.
To his critics, he says, "It's not immigrants that are hurting (native) workers. It's the immigration laws . . . that make undocumented immigrants so exploitable. That vulnerability is what hurts both them and naturalized workers."
He said SEIU has been trying for years to get Congress to pass immigration reform that includes strict enforcement of the borders.
"We need something that's fair, that's workable, that doesn't drive people deeper into the shadows."
He said his organization does not check immigration status of applicants. He estimates that almost half of the local members are immigrants and a significant portion of the immigrants are undocumented.
"Our members don't improve their lives if we divide people who do the same work, if we divide immigrants and non-immigrants. Our mission is best served when we unite all people."
Justice for Janitors
When Monica Martinez joined SEIU in early 1986, she didn't know that she would become part of a national union success story.
She had just moved to Denver from Mexico and was making less than $4 an hour with no benefits at a part-time janitor job in a downtown Denver office building. An SEIU organizer asked her to join.
She soon walked picket lines in a vanguard campaign called Justice for Janitors.
At that time, national SEIU leaders - including president John Sweeney, the current AFL-CIO head, and Andy Stern, the current SEIU president - had decided to change tactics to stop the decline in membership. They chose Denver and Pittsburgh to test the new strategy - organizing all the janitors in the city first and then negotiating contracts with contractors with the blessing of property owners.
Before then, the union was fighting separately with each contractor for 10-cent raises - which made the contractors vulnerable to losing jobs at buildings that would look for nonunion firms.
The union employed street-theater tactics like chaining themselves together and blocking busy downtown intersections. They negotiated contracts for about 800 downtown janitors in 1987.
When Ackerman came to Denver in 1996 to lead Local 105, the union had reached a more stubborn roadblock: organizing janitors at the Denver Tech Center and other suburban office parks where owners and contractors were more resistent to union work.
So Ackerman launched a three-year campaign using the same civil-disobedience tactics. He hired organizers and got money from headquarters in Washington. Pointing to a photo of him being led away in handcuffs during a downtown protest, Ackerman said police made 150 arrests. In 2000, the union negotiated health care benefits and paid vacation and personal days, plus raises, for hundreds of suburban workers.
INFOBOX
Union by the numbers 5,300 Number of members of Service Employees International Union Local 105, including 2,100 nurses, medical assistants, technicians, secretaries and other support staff at Kaiser Permanente, 300 at the Mental Health Center of Denver, 2,400 commercial office janitors, and 500 janitors, parking agents and window cleaners at DIA. * About $2 million: Annual dues collected by Local 105. * 2 million: Number of workers in Colorado in 2005. Sources: Seiu Local 105, U.S. Department Of Labor, Colorado Secretary Of State, Internal Revenue Service