Hunger Strike Marks Union’s Split : Labor: Strong dissident group within janitors organization launches protest after effort to take control of board is blocked.

The Service Employees International Union took desperately poor, Latino immigrant janitors and turned them into a militant army of in-your-face protesters powerful enough to force Los Angeles’ biggest cleaning companies to unionize.

Now, the janitors and other rank-and-file members of the organization are using their tactics within the union itself, staging a hunger strike to protest leadership they say is unresponsive, undemocratic, even racist.

The disaffected members appear to be operating from a position of strength: They ran a 21-person dissident slate called the Multiracial Alliance in Local 399’s June elections and won, taking control of the union’s executive board.

But longtime Local 399 President Jim Zellers has blocked the new board’s directives to set up a grievance committee, fire some union officials and tear down a locked door in the union’s anteroom that separates members from union representatives.

So Thursday, a dozen dissidents launched a hunger strike in front of the union building, vowing to forsake food until the union leadership gives them the power they say their faction won at the ballot box.

Zellers and union members who support him say the dissidents won by using a timeworn but unscrupulous technique: patronage, essentially promising supporters union jobs. Zellers decries the dissidents’ tactics: threatening to storm the building, picketing outside with signs complaining about white leadership. He said the lead dissident, Cesar A. Oliva Sanchez, cannot speak English to conduct negotiations with cleaning company executives and lacks the experience to do the job. The rift caused by the dissidents, Zellers said, threatens to undo dizzying gains by the local--one of California’s largest--that made 399’s “Justice for Janitors” campaign a national model.

“I want to respect the results of the election,” Zellers said. But dissident members--who were able to capture board positions up to the rank of executive vice president--tried to fire at least 12 of the local’s 80 employees, offering those jobs to their friends, relatives and other dissidents instead, he said. That action usurped Zellers’ authority, he said: “I am the chief executive officer. I have the power to hire and fire.”

Still, hunger strikers--many of whom were part of a group of janitors beaten by police in an infamous 1990 Century City union march--said they plan to use hardball tactics to take a more prominent place within the union. The rabble-rousers have set up a portable toilet in the union’s parking lot and planted tents in the flower beds by the union’s front door. At 3 a.m., as janitors get off their jobs, hundreds rush to the union building in the darkness to support the hunger strikers.

“They shut the doors on us,” said hunger striker Martin Barrera, 32, a janitor camped out in front of the union’s offices. “They say the leadership we elected isn’t capable of doing the job. They treat us like ignorant peasants.”

He said Local 399 is a classic case of a union sucking up dues and taking its membership for granted. The union, he and others add, has funneled much of members’ dues into expansion--organizing new workers. (The union local says 10% of its budget goes into organizing.) Barrera said Local 399’s “old guard” leadership consists of white men who speak broken Spanish at best and can’t communicate with much of their membership.

In front of the union building, dissidents have hung several banners that berate union management. One shows 399’s Zellers stomping on the union’s constitution. He is flanked by adoring pigs. “Respect the will of the workers! Let us govern!” says another banner, flapping in a hot August breeze. Unionized janitors and health workers honk as they drive their cars by the dissidents, showing their support.

Members milling outside the union hall in support of the strikers said that for two years the Multiracial Alliance--which consists mostly of Latinos but includes whites and African Americans--pressed its complaints on union leadership to no avail. The past executive board, they claim, consisted not of rank-and-file members, but of paid staffers who rubber-stamped Zellers’ directives. For decades, they note, the 25 elected officials ran largely unopposed. There was little effort, said dissident leader Sanchez, who cleans a Downtown high-rise, to deal with janitors’ pressing issues: layoffs and increased pressure for janitors to work more rapidly.

“When management fires a member, or they force you to work faster and faster, and we look for a representative, they aren’t here,” said Sanchez, pointing at the union building. Sanchez, sporting a headband reading “Huelguista”-- striker-- said: “We want to get rid of people not doing their job.”

“We built this union. We want to be able to make the decisions,” said Sanchez, who is from Guatemala. “I want to improve the lot of the workers. We must be respected as much by the companies we work for as by the union we pay dues to.”

Sanchez and other janitors took two months off from their low-paying jobs to campaign for the dissident slate, often living off their wives’ meager earnings or other janitors’ donations. On the day of the vote, they pooled their resources to rent vans to shuttle workers to polling places.

In the end, 11% of the 25,000 members voted, and dissidents won all the contested races--21 of 25 positions on the ballot. On July 13, when the slate took power, the new executive board met and passed the series of resolutions opposed by Zellers.

The public brawl over who will control Local 399 comes just as the president of the union, John Sweeney, stumps as the dissident candidate in an October vote over who will head the powerful AFL-CIO. Sweeney--considered the early favorite--is running on a clear message: Minorities and immigrants must be brought into big labor’s camp, which must emphasize democratic reform and worker participation.

Some janitors, who say the union has improved their lives dramatically in recent years, are rallying to Zellers’ side. In 1987, when Local 399 launched the Justice for Janitors campaign, just 10% of janitors in major Los Angeles commercial buildings were unionized; now about 90% of the janitors belong to the union. Pay has risen, and most now have health and other benefits they once only dreamed of.

“The dissidents said that if you support us, we will give you union work. They offered jobs with big salaries to people,” said Waldemar Morales, 24. “Most of the union representatives are doing a good job of representing us.”

Rosa Ayala, 51, cleans a Beverly Hills commercial building. During an earlier hunger strike that was called to pressure cleaning companies in Westwood’s commercial buildings to unionize, Ayala was on the front lines. But she bitterly opposes this hunger strike.

“I am a worker, a janitor,” she said. “They [the dissidents] will help erode what we fought so hard to gain. The companies are already saying we are weaker, that we are divided.”