This document summarizes SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign in Century City, Los Angeles in the 1990s. It describes how SEIU organized the 400 janitors employed by non-union subcontractors in Century City. Their efforts included marches, demonstrations, and a strike vote. A pivotal moment was a peaceful protest that was violently attacked by police, injuring 25 people. This galvanized support and the janitors eventually won their fight, gaining raises and benefits. Their struggle in Century City became a subject of the film "Bread and Roses" and demonstrated SEIU's ability to organize shifting immigrant workforces.

1. CHAPTER 3
Janitors And e Battle Of Century City
SEIU Rebuilds Base, Hits One Million Members
A s the decade of the 1990s opened, SEIU’s e ort to re-
gain lost ground for janitors in Los Angeles began on the
Olympic Boulevard bus that went from Century City to Pico
bordering on Beverly Hills. Fancy law rms, corporations, and
lm and television companies had o ces there cleaned by some
400 janitors employed by nonunion cleaning subcontractors.
Union each day at 2:30 a.m. One of those, the Danish-owned ISS, employed 250—making
“It was the janitors’ private bus,” recalled Jono Sha er, an it the center of SEIU’s e orts.
SEIU organizer on the Justice for Janitors campaign in 1989. e location was somewhat self-contained, which worked
“ ere sure wasn’t anyone else on it, and it was the one place to the union’s advantage. In addition to riding the bus togeth-
where they could talk freely about their jobs.”28 er, many of the janitors would gather at the single lunch truck
SEIU, which had about 5,000 members working as jani- that came at mealtime. e geography of the buildings worked
tors in Los Angeles in 1978, had won contracts by 1982 that to provide a fairly easy opportunity for organizers to make con-
pushed wages above $12 an hour and provided full health ben- tact with janitors.28c
e ts. But building owners had begun a rush to subcontract Most of the Century City janitors were Latinos, some
cleaning services at nonunion wages of less than $4 an hour from Mexico and others from El Salvador and elsewhere in
with no bene ts. Central America, a region many had ed during con icts there
e shift to a hyper-competitive market resulted in new in the 1980s. Soon rank-and- le activists and union organiz-
nonunion rms entering the business, while union companies ers began a series of marches and demonstrations that signaled
also set up nonunion subsidiaries to compete. the workers’ dissatisfaction. Usually, these noisy encounters in-
SEIU soon found itself struggling to survive after the last volved chants, beating on drums, and aggressive activities not
L.A. master agreement was reached in 1983 and membership particularly welcomed by the business executives operating in
had sunk to about 1,500. A building boom had transformed the buildings’ fancy o ces.
the market in Los Angeles, and even downtown Local 399 had e union did a Secretary’s Day action during which
only about 30 percent of the workforce in the late 1980s.28a thousands of carnations were passed out to the secretaries who
e new SEIU e ort in Los Angeles focused on Bradford, worked in Century City o ces, saying thanks, in e ect, to oth-
a nonunion rm eventually acquired by American Building er relatively low-wage workers who had been inconvenienced
Maintenance. SEIU Local 399 won a master agreement there by earlier protests. All the action led to tenants complaining to
in April 1989, which was the rst such contract in downtown the building owners about the unrest.28d
L.A. in six years.28b In May 1990, having made little headway with the build-
e next Justice for Janitors campaign focused on Century ing owners and the subcontractors, including ISS, SEIU took
City, the commercial center on the West Side of Los Angeles a strike vote. After announcing the results in newspaper ads,

2. 26 STRONGER TOGETHER: THE STORY OF SEIU
the janitors walked. For days they tied up tra c and marched Century City who went on to become president of SEIU Local
through the buildings, which prompted the Los Angeles Police 615 in Boston.30
Department (LAPD) to declare a citywide tactical alert. e police riot enraged many across the country and es-
e Century City struggle’s turning point came on June pecially in Los Angeles, where an even broader group of clergy
15, 1990, when Justice for Janitors held a peaceful march from and community leaders as well as elected o cials gave new
Beverly Hills to Century City. About support to the union’s struggle. e
100 police wielding batons attacked janitors adopted the United Farm
the 400 or so janitors and supporters e janitors’ struggle Workers’ rallying cry, “Sí Se Puede”
at the intersection of Olympic Boule- (Yes We Can), long before it was used
vard and Century Park East. LAPD became the subject of the in President Obama’s 2008 election
o cers engaged in a police riot, seri- movie Bread and Roses. campaign.
ously injuring about 25 people, in- In the end, the Century City jan-
cluding a pregnant woman who mis- itors won their ght.
carried after the attack. e janitors’ struggle at Century City—and their vic-
e protestors had sat in the middle of the intersection tory—became the subject of a major feature lm directed by
expecting to be arrested. But rather than an orderly, peaceful Ken Loach entitled Bread and Roses. It brought the Justice
arrest process, the LAPD waded into the group and began hit- for Janitors story to a wide audience throughout the world a
ting demonstrators with their batons. ose who attempted to decade later.
get up were knocked back to the ground. Soon LAPD o cers Los Angeles, the city where the union had its greatest loss
had called for backup, and dozens more arrived to do battle.28e of membership and deepest contract concessions at the end of
Most of the fray was lmed by numerous TV cameras as the 1970s and into the early 1980s, had been a successful test
reporters looked on. Bob Baker of the Los Angeles Times report- of SEIU’s ability to organize where the workforce had shifted
ed that “several o cers ignored calls from supervisors to stop rapidly from African American to Latino. Janitors were able to
charging the demonstrators.”29 About 40 peaceful protestors win raises, health insurance, and other bene ts, and were able
were arrested. Sgt. William de la Torre, an LAPD spokesper- to demonstrate that the union could halt the cleaning rms’ ex-
son, told reporters after the attack that police had “reacted with panded use of double-breasting (creating nonunion operations
quite an amount of restraint.” (Less than a year later, that same alongside their unionized units).
LAPD brutalized Rodney King with repeated blows by baton In L.A., SEIU didn’t hesitate to spend money on the orga-
that were captured on videotape and led to two o cers being nizing program and to commit substantial research and orga-
sentenced to prison terms for their violence.) nizing sta , many newly hired, to the challenge.
Justice for Janitors organizers feared the aftermath of the A key to the Century City outcome was the expansion
police attack might have an intimidating e ect on the struggle. of coordinated activity by other SEIU local unions, particu-
But instead of staying home, the workers turned out in force. larly Local 32BJ in New York, which had a bargaining rela-
“It was just, that’s it. ey cannot treat us like this when we tionship with ISS, the multinational based in Denmark. e
didn’t do anything,” wrote Rocio Saenz, an SEIU organizer at rm was fully unionized in its home country, but viciously

3. JANITORS AND THE BATTLE OF CENTURY CITY 27
anti-union where the opportunity presented itself, such as an advocate for reform of the nation’s healthcare system. Com-
L.A. Without pressure from Local 32BJ, it’s unclear whether panies such as Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) had
or not the union could have forced ISS to yield to the Century begun o ering nonpro t hospitals their brand of “for-pro t”
City campaign. management services. Kaiser Permanente, the prominent non-
Led by Gus Bevona, 32BJ seldom used its power on behalf pro t HMO, repeatedly took on its employees, leading to a
of other union locals. An internal union report in the early strike at virtually every SEIU-organized Kaiser facility in the
1990s said that “our inability to get Local 32BJ to take the lead country starting in the mid-1980s.
in using its leverage to support organizing around the country By 1989, some 37 million Americans had no health insur-
as well as in New Jersey—its own backyard and jurisdiction— ance—and two-thirds of the uninsured were employed. Ex-
has cost the union literally tens of thousands of members. It is perts estimated that nearly 100 million people in the United
a real question as to how long the local can maintain its power States were underinsured.
and standards, as the rest of the country continues to lag farther Employer-based healthcare over the years had been a stan-
and farther behind.” dard bene t for many workers, particularly those with union
But L.A. proved an exception (as did Washington, D.C., contracts, but that system began to erode as Republican-in-
later). e support from 32BJ, other SEIU locals on the West spired “free market” competition helped lead to runaway in a-
Coast, and the intervention of the Danish unions pressuring tion in the cost of health insurance.
ISS on its home turf, all contributed to the reorganizing of Los Hospital organizing was plagued by delays in the election
Angeles by the union’s Justice for Janitors campaign. ISS and process due to employers contesting the makeup of bargaining
Bradford together represented 3,500 janitors, and others at units in most cases. But in 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court
American Building Maintenance and other big cleaning con- unanimously rejected objections by hospitals to new NLRB
tractors followed. unit determination rules, making it easier to organize hospi-
e Century City win bolstered those who argued SEIU tals—one of SEIU’s biggest legal victories.
could take bold action across entire markets and didn’t have to SEIU’s healthcare membership jumped by more than
be limited to organizing a few buildings and janitors at a time. 50,000 in 1989 when certain districts of District 1199 outside
New York City that earlier had been part of the Retail, Whole-
sale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) voted to a li-
W hile SEIU was winning organizing victories in Los An-
geles, San Jose, and elsewhere in the early 1990s and
adding tens of thousands of new members through a liations
ate. An earlier round of merger talks in the early 1980s failed
because of internal strife within RWDSU.
in the public sector, much of the rest of American labor found In 1973, District 1199 had established itself as the semi-
itself in decline. Eight years under President Reagan’s anti- autonomous National Union of Hospital and Health Care Em-
union policies followed by another four years of George H.W. ployees (NUHHCE) under the militant Leon Davis, who had
Bush had weakened the union movement. a reputation for aggressive organizing and left politics. NUH-
e healthcare crisis had deepened and SEIU President HCE became a “union within a union” and gained more auton-
Sweeney, who had chaired the AFL-CIO’s Health Care Com- omy from the RWDSU, which had retail clerks as its base. Da-
mittee since 1984, pushed the union into a leading position as vis supported the idea of one healthcare union for all healthcare

4. 30 STRONGER TOGETHER: THE STORY OF SEIU
workers and had talked with SEIU President George Hardy in workers then would be permanently replaced and the compa-
the 1970s about some form of merger with SEIU. nies would operate nonunion going forward.
By 1981, with 1199/NUHHCE’s greater autonomy from Kirkland chain-smoked cigarettes using a long yellowed
RWDSU, a merger referendum was held with more than 75 holder and was prone to withering dismissal of colleagues, re-
percent of the healthcare members voting in favor of talks porters, and anyone he disliked. His indi erence to the plight
with SEIU that could lead to a dual a liation for them. But of member unions in steep decline contrasted with his abiding
RWDSU leaders trusteed 1199/NUHHCE on the grounds of interest in pursing an anti-communist agenda on the interna-
“dissension,” and the hopes of merging with SEIU’s healthcare tional stage.
sector were put o . In the aftermath, 1199/NUHHCE disaf-
liated from RWDSU and became independently chartered by
the AFL-CIO in 1984.
e vote by key districts of 1199 to join SEIU in
1989 added healthcare workers in 12 states, the District of
Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Other 1199 districts represent-
ing about 25,000 workers a liated with AFCSME during
this period.
e membership growth in the healthcare sector, the huge
expansion in public employee a liations, and the Justice for
Janitors victories all poised SEIU for the incredible achieve-
ment of reaching one million members. On a fall day in 1991
in Miami, a nurses’ group of Haitian, Jamaican, Puerto Rican,
Filipino, Nicaraguan, Cuban, African American, and white
backgrounds boosted SEIU over the million-member mark.
T he success of SEIU with the achievement of one mil-
lion members unfortunately was not replicated by the
American labor movement, which under AFL-CIO Presi-
dent Lane Kirkland continued to decline in numbers and
clout. Kirkland, a protégé of George Meany, had succeeded
him in 1979 and presided over the long, slow decline of the
labor federation.
In the industrial heartland, plant after plant closed. Other
companies shook o years of decent labor relations with their
unions and, taking a page out of Ronald Reagan’s PATCO
SEIU’s victory at Century City helped spark renewed organizing of janitors
book, made contract demands aimed at forcing strikes. e across Los Angeles and elsewhere in the early 1990s.

5. JANITORS AND THE BATTLE OF CENTURY CITY 31
A supporter of the Vietnam War, Kirkland played a key
role in the AFL-CIO’s refusal to campaign for Democratic
presidential nominee George McGovern in 1972. Later, he
aligned with conservatives and neo-conservatives in forming
the Committee on the Present Danger, which campaigned for
large military budgets. e AFL-CIO did support the Solidar-
nosc movement in Poland, an act for which Kirkland deservedly
won credit. But in many other countries, American labor was
viewed with hostility for alignment with right-wing politicians
and governments that often suppressed worker movements.
Under Kirkland, the AFL-CIO and its various units spent
more on international a airs than on organizing, civil rights,
and worker health and safety.31
e election of Bill Clinton as U.S. President in 1992, af-
ter 12 years of Republican control of the White House, held
out hope for a reversal of labor’s decline under Kirkland. But
during the crucial moment when a bill was under consideration
on Capitol Hill that would have banned permanent replace-
ment of strikers, Kirkland was o in Europe—a symbol for
his critics of indi erence to the bread-and-butter concerns of
American workers.
T he labor movement during this period made a strategic
miscalculation in delaying the legislative push for labor
law reform and accepting President Clinton’s proposal in 1993 e story of the SEIU janitors’ victory at Century City became a feature lm
starring Adrien Brody and Pilar Padilla in 2000.
to establish a study commission instead. Made up of man-
agement, labor, and government o cials, the commission was due to employer tactics. While major elements of the com-
chaired by John Dunlop, a Harvard law professor and noted mission report underscored labor’s case for reform of labor
labor expert. It took up the issues of workplace labor-manage- laws, business had no interest in making it easier for workers to
ment cooperation and labor law reform. join unions.
e Dunlop report did nd that workers who exercised Instead of a broad consensus on reform, the Dunlop com-
their rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) mission served to delay and di use the political e ort to update
often ended up being illegally red by employers and that labor laws. Meanwhile, employers continued to violate the
about one-third of the workplaces where workers voted to join rights of workers who sought to join unions. e delay disap-
a union ended up without a collective bargaining agreement pointed many, including SEIU leaders and members, who had

6. 32 STRONGER TOGETHER: THE STORY OF SEIU
hoped the rst Democratic president in 12 years would have ney. It soon became likely that the New Voice slate of Swee-
used his clout to push labor law reform forward. (By missing ney, Richard Trumka of the United Mine Workers, and Linda
this opportunity, the issue languished for more than 15 years Chavez- ompson of AFSCME would have the majority of
until legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act began votes at the federation’s convention.
to be debated as a serious option after the election of Barack Sweeney’s New Voice slate called for spending $20 mil-
Obama as President in 2008.) lion to put thousands of new organizers in the eld to try to
For workers who had hoped for progress through the ban regain lost ground. ey sought a “Sunbelt Organizing Fund”
on permanent replacement of strikers and broader labor law re- to expand unionization of the growing Southern and Western
form, some disillusionment set in. en came President Clin- workforce. Taking a cue from SEIU’s own organizing successes,
ton’s inability to move healthcare reform and his energetic push Sweeney proposed not only a separate organizing department
to pass the disastrous North American Free Trade Agreement for the AFL-CIO, but also a “Center for Strategic Campaigns”
(NAFTA), which was strongly opposed by labor. that would bring the federation a new capability to wage cor-
In 1994, Democrats paid the price with huge losses porate accountability campaigns.
at the polls that left both the House and Senate under Rep- e New Voice forces chose a young SEIU activist named
ublican control. Anna Burger to manage their campaign. Picking up addition-
A group of union presidents of major AFL-CIO a liates, al support from some smaller unions and from central labor
including SEIU President John Sweeney, began to meet pri- councils, the Sweeney forces embraced the expanded organiz-
vately to discuss the need to reinvigorate the labor movement, ing e ort and also a more e ective political action program in
starting with replacing Kirkland. Presidents of the United Auto the wake of Republican gains in the 1994 elections.
Workers, Teamsters, United Steelworkers, AFSCME, United With the New Voice for American Workers slate gaining
Mine Workers, and other unions approached Kirkland, then the backing of 21 unions representing 56 percent of the del-
age 72, and urged him to retire and clear the way for AFL-
CIO Secretary-Treasurer Tom Donahue to move up. Kirkland
refused and attempted to dig in. He blasted the dissidents as
disloyal to him and to the concept of labor solidarity.
e union presidents formed a “Committee for Change”
and decided to run a candidate against Kirkland at the federa-
tion’s 1995 convention. Donahue, unwilling to oppose Kirk-
land, resigned as AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, and the next
day Kirkland announced he would once again be a candidate
for the AFL-CIO presidency.
Under the “New Voice for American Workers” label, the
Kirkland opposition made clear it wanted “an organizing presi-
AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland (right) was pushed out in 1995 after
dent” to replace him. Rejecting AFSCME President Gerald devoting his energies to an anti-communist agenda abroad rather than build-
ing union strength in the United States. Kirkland talked here with President
McEntee as too polarizing, the group settled on SEIU’s Swee- George H.W. Bush.

7. JANITORS AND THE BATTLE OF CENTURY CITY 33
egates to the AFL-CIO convention, Lane Kirkland announced picking up crucial support from state federations and central
he would resign e ective August 1, 1995. With Kirkland out, labor councils.
former Secretary-Treasurer Tom Donahue jumped into the At the convention, Sweeney won the support of 34 unions
race, but his moment had passed. with delegates representing 57 percent of the AFL-CIO’s mem-
A former Local 32BJ activist, Donahue embraced some of bership. It was a victory that held out great hope for a reinvigo-
the New Voice program after being selected as Kirkland’s re- rated American labor movement that would put new resources
placement until the convention in October 1995. But Sweeney behind organizing and political action.
and his New Voice allies continued to run a skillful campaign, And it left a vacancy in the presidency of SEIU.