Her Campaign Shows She Knows Value of Hard Work

Knocking on doors for votes is standard fare for any hard-fought political campaign.

Lupe Rodriguez took that one step further in her successful bid to head the second-largest laborers union in Southern California: She knocked on the doors of union members’ families in Mexico.

That kind of commitment paid off a week ago when Rodriguez, 42, bested four other candidates to become business manager of Laborers International Local 652 in Santa Ana. The union represents 3,100 workers, many of whom are Mexican immigrants, and about 1,000 retirees.

Her win was significant on several fronts. She is the first woman to head a large Orange County union and the first Latina to head the male-dominated laborers. She will fill the remaining two years of the three-year term of her predecessor, Ruben L. Gomez, ousted by the international leadership in April for using union funds for personal travel.

Sitting in a booth at Azteca Restaurant in Santa Ana last week, Rodriguez said she’s sensitive to the ground-breaking nature of her new job. She will be sworn in June 28 at the union’s general membership meeting.

“I heard a lot of criticism, mostly from the old-timers and the retirees about thinking twice about me [because of gender],” she said. “Sometimes you have to get tough, sometimes things are really smooth. I’m a woman, but I’ll act like a man if I have to.”

State union officials said Rodriguez’s election is a reflection of the maturity of the membership. Laborers provide manual labor for other trade unions.

“The election of Lupe Rodriguez demonstrates that the construction industry has opportunities for women that extend beyond the job site,” said Bob Balgenorth, president of State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, based in Sacramento.

As a union organizer and most recently president of the union, the No. 2 job, Rodriguez lobbied in the past for other candidates and ran for a seat on the international union’s district council. When Gomez left, several members asked her to become a candidate, she said.

“Most members know I started as a laborer,” said Rodriguez, who met most of them working as a dispatcher assigning construction jobs. “I was confident that God would help me, and so would the members.”

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It was a tense election, with Gomez serving as campaign manager for the second-highest vote-getter, Rudy Rios. Rodriguez said she figured she was in a strong position when members’ spouses showed up to help distribute campaign literature and make phone calls.

During a three-week vacation to the Mexican state of Jalisco, where she was born and raised, Rodriguez visited families of union members. She also traveled to the neighboring state of Michoacan, where her daughter-in-law was born and raised, and introduced herself to union families there.

The election was held this past Sunday, with organizers hoping that voting on a family day would end a repeat of the fistfights that broke out during past elections.

“I was very calm the whole day,” Rodriguez said. “I had so many good people helping me. I don’t know what I would have done without them.”

Rodriguez said her focus for the next two years will be on expanding the union, fostering good relations with contractors and construction companies, and launching training programs for members and high school graduates interested in the trade.

The union also will step up political involvement through its political action committee, she said. The union was active in the campaigns of Democrats Rep. Loretta Sanchez, state Sen. Joe Dunn and Assemblyman Lou Correa, as well as Gov. Gray Davis and backed a successful Santa Ana school bond measure.

Rodriguez said she’d rather work cooperatively to achieve the union’s goals. But “sometimes you have to defend yourself,” she said, such as when the union fought Disneyland several years ago in its attempt to get freeway offramps built into the theme park.

The union wanted working conditions improved at the park, and becoming politically active over the interchange issue “was the only way to get their attention,” Rodriguez said. Ultimately, the ramps were built into city streets, not into the park itself.

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This past week, Rodriguez and other union members were on hand to support a rally in Santa Ana by domestic home-care workers for better pay and benefits.

A widow and mother of two sons, Rodriguez joined the laborers union in 1990, working first in construction, then becoming a landscaper at Disneyland. She worked the 2 to 10 a.m. shift, planting flowers and arranging hanging baskets throughout the park, sleeping during the day while her sons were in school.

Seven years ago, she moved the family from Santa Ana to Mission Viejo, attracted by the school system. Her eldest son, Mario, 24, now lives in Costa Mesa with his wife and their two children, where he works for a construction company. Christopher, 14, lives with his mother and grandmother, and attends Trabuco Hills High School.