Unionizing L.A. Guards Isn’t Easy

They are sentinels of the new downtown Los Angeles: the thousands of security guards who stand outside lofts in the Old Bank District, patrol the granite and marble foyers of Bunker Hill high rises and keep watch over the bustling Broadway shopping district.

The Service Employees International Union has made it a top goal to unionize the area’s office guards -- setting the stage for a labor battle that downtown hasn’t seen since cleaning crews went on strike five years ago.

But it’s proving more difficult than the union expected.

The union mounted a nationwide campaign to organize workers three years ago, arguing the guards have long been underpaid and denied benefits.

Using as its model the successful effort in gaining representation for office janitors, the union has succeeded in cities like Chicago and San Francisco. But efforts in Los Angeles have been stalled for more than two years, as some of the city’s major landlords, notably Robert Maguire, have fought unionization.

Their argument: It’s wrong for janitors and guards who work in their buildings to belong to the same union.

The union says it has collected cards of support from most of the guards working in targeted buildings. But those guards are employed by contract firms, which, in turn, are hired by the landlords.

And the firms won’t recognize the union without assurances from landlords that they will not lose their contracts if they do so, said Jono Shaffer, director of the union’s national security organizing campaign.

In the last few months, union officials intensified their campaign on landlords by holding rallies, prayer vigils and other events.

But it’s still too soon to tell whether any of those efforts will yield a resolution of the standoff.

SEIU Local 1877 estimates that there are 10,000 office guards in Los Angeles County, most of them serving downtown’s high-rise towers and condos.

Many of the guards, the union says, are paid low wages and must pay their own healthcare costs.

Landlords said they weren’t necessarily against the unionization of their workers.

But they said they worry that having both guards and janitors in the same union would test loyalties in the event of a strike by either group.

“Maguire does not oppose the unionization of its workers,” said Peggy Moretti, a spokeswoman for Maguire Properties, which owns the Gas Co. Tower, One California Plaza, the Wells Fargo Tower and other downtown buildings.

“And I don’t know that our guards are pushing to unionize. If they were, they have a right to unionize.”

Robert Maguire was one of the most vocal supporters of the janitors’ efforts in 2000. And the company, said Moretti, already has arrangements in place to ensure that the guards in its buildings receive healthcare and wages higher than industry standards.

The unionization effort is focused primarily in downtown but would also cover other areas, including Century City and Westwood.

A strike by janitors in 2000 -- which Maguire eventually helped settle -- drew a national focus to the workers and is credited, in part, for breathing new life into the nation’s labor movement.

The strike blocked streets and gained sympathy, as janitors marched boisterously -- accompanied by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and then-City Atty. James K. Hahn -- and protested outside the gates of downtown office towers.

Union officials have been hoping for another victory with the guards.

Shaffer said that the current bidding process between guard companies and landlords often ensures that landlords hire the company with the lowest bid.

And “every dollar you take out of a bid is coming out of a worker’s pocket,” he said.

The union, Shaffer said, is pushing landlords, tenants and guard companies “to share the cost to minimally acceptable levels.”

Lately, said union officials, they focused their efforts on landlords not just downtown but also in the South Los Angeles neighborhoods that many of the city’s guards call home.

“Everybody understands, you go through South L.A., you are going to find lots of security guards,” said Shaffer. “It’s one of the few private-sector jobs that young African American and Chicano workers, folks getting out of high school, can get into and do get into.”

Last weekend, as part of the weekend campaign, congregations at a number of predominantly African American churches, including Mt. Gilead Baptist Church, prayed for the guards’ efforts. This weekend, other churches will be holding similar events.

The guards, said Mt. Gilead Pastor William Monroe Campbell, “are without voice, and they are in a vulnerable place of employment.”

Security guard Lillie Lewis, who is involved in the unionization efforts, has worked since 1987 in Century City’s twin towers.

In an interview Friday, she complained that she is constantly having to train new co-workers. “Sometimes we hire a person and they don’t ever come back,” she said.

As an employee of Universal Protection Services -- the third firm to oversee security in the buildings since she arrived -- Lewis said she makes $9.35 an hour.

“It is a steady job, but it’s not a living wage,” she said. “We are protecting the whole building and everyone in it. But we are at the bottom of the pay level, the respect level. And it’s getting worse.”

Moretti, in turn, said the union’s efforts “are designed to be divisive and threatening.”

She also expressed skepticism that the union’s new efforts, including the rallies downtown, would break the impasse.

“When and if there are discussions,” she said, “they will be held between parties and not through the media.”