andy wins one

Union organizers have obtained what they say is
majority support in one of the biggest unionization
drives in the South in decades, collecting the
signatures of thousands of Houston janitors.

In an era when unions typically face frustration and
failure in attracting workers in the private sector,
the Service Employees International Union is bringing
in 5,000 janitors from several companies at once. With
work force experts saying that unions face a slow death
unless they can figure out how to organize private-
sector workers in big bunches, labor leaders are
looking to the Houston campaign as a model.

The service employees, which led a breakaway of four
unions from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. last summer, has used
several unusual tactics in Houston, among them lining
up the support of religious leaders, pension funds and
the city's mayor, Bill White, a Democrat. Making the
effort even more unusual has been the union's success
in a state that has long been hostile to labor.

"It's the largest unionization campaign in the South in
years," said Julius Getman, a labor law professor at
the University of Texas. "Other unions will say, 'Yes,
it can be done here.' "

Mr. Getman predicted that the Houston effort would
embolden other unions to take their chances with
ambitious drives in the South, although success could
prove difficult because many companies will continue to
fight unionization efforts, and many workers still shy
away from unions.

"This could be important to build momentum in the
South, but it's still an incredibly hard task to
organize" there, said Richard W. Hurd, a professor of
labor relations at Cornell. "One big problem is there's
not a base of union members in the South to use to do
organizing. And employers in the South have
demonstrated a very strong antiunion bias and a
willingness to go to great lengths to avoid
unionization."

The service employees' success comes as the percentage
of private-sector workers in unions has dropped to 7.9
percent, the lowest rate in more than a century.

With its campaign to organize the janitors, the union
has focused on two groups it says are pivotal if labor
is to grow again: low-wage workers and immigrants. The
janitors, nearly all of them immigrants, earn just over
$100 a week on average, usually working part time for
$5.25 an hour.

Some of Houston's business leaders oppose the
unionization drive, saying its pledge of higher wages
may hurt business.

"I don't see how it's going to help Houston from a
business standpoint," said Mark Jodon, a Houston lawyer
who represents employers. "It has the potential of
raising the cost of doing business."

The union has trumpeted the Houston effort - which cost
more than $1 million - as part of its Justice for
Janitors campaign, billed as an antipoverty movement.

Flora Aguilar, a Mexican immigrant who cleans an office
tower for $5.25 an hour, volunteered to help the
organizing drive as soon as the union gave the janitors
questionnaires asking what aspects of their jobs they
thought needed improvement.

"The wages are terrible, there are no benefits, there's
nothing," Ms. Aguilar said. "I have to stretch myself
like a rubber band to make ends meet. I want a union
because it will give me a better life."

In recent days, the union has collected cards signed by
about three-fifths of the workers at four of Houston's
biggest janitorial companies. An agreement signed in
August calls for the American Arbitration Association
to inspect the cards and certify when the union has
received majority support. The janitorial companies
have promised to recognize the union once that happens.

Even if the union is recognized, it still faces a big
obstacle in negotiating a contract that delivers some
of the hoped-for improvements in wages and benefits.

Yet the union's Texas achievement stands in stark
contrast to the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s failed drive in the
early 1980's, which sought to recruit tens of thousands
of Houston workers. Known as the Houston Organizing
Project, that $1-million-a-year effort faltered along
with the economy, as unions retreated and focused on
holding onto the workers they had, and as Texas
companies fought hard against unionizing.

Despite the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s anger at the service
employees' union, which in breaking away had accused
the federation of doing too little to organize workers,
Stewart Acuff, the federation's organizing director,
praised the Houston janitors' campaign, saying more
such drives were needed.

In the current campaign, the service employees urged
several public-employee pension funds to press building
owners and janitorial companies not to mount hard-
hitting anti-union campaigns to defeat the organizing
drive. To step up the pressure, the union called a
strike at one building in Houston and then arranged
sympathy strikes by janitors at 75 office buildings in
four other states.

Because the union had no office or local in Houston,
its giant local of building-service workers in Chicago
oversaw the recruitment drive. That local dispatched a
top official to Houston to run the campaign and flew in
25 Spanish-speaking janitors for weeks at a time to
talk to janitors at their homes and workplaces.

Workers were told of the union's success in New Jersey,
where the salaries of 4,500 recently organized janitors
had risen to $11.90 an hour from $5.85 an hour three
years ago, and where many part-time workers had been
converted to full-time status with health benefits.

The union announced its campaign last April, but two
years earlier, it sent a community liaison to Houston
who helped line up backing from the city's mayor,
several congressmen and dozens of clergymen, including
the Roman Catholic archbishop, Joseph A. Fiorenza. The
archbishop even celebrated a special Mass for janitors
in August and spoke at the union's kickoff rally,
telling the janitors that God was unhappy that they
earned so little and did not have health coverage.

"They work for the same companies that are in Chicago,
New York and Los Angeles, and their counterparts there
are getting much higher salaries," Archbishop Fiorenza
said in an interview. "It's just basic justice and
fairness that the wages should be increased here."

Office building janitors average $20 an hour in New
York City. They make $13.30 in Chicago and
Philadelphia, cities with office rents comparable to
Houston's and a cost of living about 40 percent higher.
Janitors in Houston typically earn $5.25 an hour, 10
cents more than the federal minimum wage. But business
leaders say the wages are consistent with what other
unskilled workers earn.

"The wages that are paid in Houston to janitors are
generally above minimum wage," said Tammy Bettancourt,
executive vice president of the Houston Building Owners
and Managers Association. "Their wages are very much in
line with every other part-time job and with the city's
retailers. That's what the market dictates."

Ercilia Sandoval, who cleans offices in a prime office
tower, says she has not had a raise in eight years and
does not have health insurance. A school dentist
recently found that her 7-year-old daughter had six
cavities, and fillings will cost $750, when her weekly
take-home pay is $91.50.

"Everything has gone up except our wages," Ms. Sandoval
said. "If we ask for a raise, they say, 'Anyone who
doesn't like it here, there's the door.' "

The union and the janitorial companies declined to
discuss details of the drive because of a
confidentiality agreement. The service employees have
pressured the companies to accept majority support
based on the number of workers who sign cards saying
they want a union.

Convinced that it is easier to unionize workers through
card checks, the union has shunned the typical process
of having an election run by the National Labor
Relations Board.

Even before the confidentiality agreement was signed,
cleaning company officials were reluctant to discuss
the janitors' wages and why they had agreed to card
checks and arbitrators' oversight.

OneSource, one of the nation's largest cleaning
companies, said, "OneSource, along with every other
major contractor in the Houston area, made a business
decision to remain neutral in this process."

The company said it was premature to discuss wage
levels while workers were considering whether to join
the service employees' union.

Union leaders said the cleaning companies had agreed to
remain neutral because of pressures from building
owners and pension funds, and because the service
employees had threatened to pressure operations
elsewhere, as it did with the sympathy strikes in
California, Illinois, New York and Connecticut.

Many unions hope to copy the Houston effort, but that
could be difficult because many do not have the skilled
organizers that the service employees have. Moreover,
not all other industries are as vulnerable to union
pressures.

Expanding on the Houston effort, the service employees
hope to unionize 4,000 janitors in Atlanta, 2,000 in
Phoenix and tens of thousands of shopping mall janitors
nationwide. But even the service employees have
encountered problems. For instance, their effort to
organize 7,000 condominium workers in Miami has stalled
because of opposition from the largest property
management company there.

Still, the Houston effort has gone more smoothly than
union officials had expected.

"We decided that Houston would be the place to bring to
bear everything we've built in the last 15 years," said
Stephen Lerner, director of the Justice for Janitors
campaign. "That would allow us to organize a whole city
at once