COLUMN ONE : For This Union, It’s War : Protesters scream and bang drums. Recruiters sneak into buildings. Decried by critics, the militant Justice for Janitors campaign has been wildly successful in uniting those who clean L.A. high-rises.

Union organizer Ana Navarette often begins her sales pitch in a company’s restroom, free from security cameras. After sneaking past guards, she spends hours hiding in a toilet stall until--around midnight--the roar of vacuum cleaners in the hallway signals that it is time to spring out and launch her appeal to the janitors she is trying to organize.

Today’s battleground, however, is a parking lot. The target: Mattel Inc. in El Segundo.

“I’m calling the police!” shouts a security guard who spies the pint-sized Navarette lobbying workers as they arrive for work. Another guard brakes his pickup inches from her. “Get out of here,” he snarls.

Moments later, two police cars flank Navarette, whose elbow was once broken as she was tossed off another company’s property by security guards. El Segundo Officer Arthur C. Waters threatens jail time if she trespasses again.

Navarette shrugs. “I have to do my job,” she says.

As unions struggle to survive a decade of plant closings and plummeting membership, Navarette’s Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is doing its job remarkably well, engineering a stunning turnaround with its 6-year-old Justice for Janitors campaign. SEIU’s biggest success story in its nationwide campaign is Los Angeles, which has seen its janitorial union ranks swell from 30% to 90% of those who clean high-rises in large swaths of the city--from Downtown to Century City.

To score that success, the union has defied a protracted recession in a region long hostile to unions, battling one of any city’s most powerful groups--commercial real estate owners. It has unionized those considered toughest to crack: desperately poor immigrants, most of them illegal immigrant Latinas, who work in the dead of night.

The secret? Rejecting many standard union strategies, such as government-supervised elections, the AFL-CIO-affiliated union relies on militant tactics reminiscent of the 1930s.

Critics decry these methods as vicious and warn that they will cripple the economy if widely adopted by unions.

“The janitors campaign will wreck the cleaning industry by overpricing it--just as the manufacturing industry was overpriced by high labor costs,” warned George Vallen, chief executive officer of Beverly Hills’ non-union Advance Building Maintenance Inc., which cleans Mattel, Hughes Aircraft Co. and about 70 other businesses.

JMB Realty Co. has seen cleaning costs at its Century City and Beverly Hills buildings jump 70% since the buildings went union in 1990, said JMB labor counsel Fred Richman.

“As cleaning companies go union, they pass their increased costs on to us. Ultimately, the price of doing business is reflected in the cost of the product--whether it is a car or a toy,” said Michael Durik, Mattel’s senior vice president for human resources and administration.

Labor leaders, however, see the Justice for Janitors campaign as a desperately needed model for unions, particularly in the fast-growing, low-wage service jobs that make up a third of the U.S. work force.

“They are a real inspiration to the labor movement. Employers who once said ‘over my dead body,’ recognize and negotiate with them,” said Maria Elena Durazo, president of the Los Angeles Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local 11. Such strategies, she said, are essential for labor to survive the ‘90s when, a UC Santa Barbara study predicts, unionized private workers’ ranks may shrivel from 11.5% to 5% of the labor force.

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Late one evening, Navarette, clad in her red satin union jacket, slips past a janitorial company supervisor into a tiny basement room of the Los Angeles International Airport Business Center’s parking lot. The cleaning crew is receptive.

In this luxury building, the janitors eat in a tiny cinder-block room piled high with bottles of pink and blue cleaning chemicals. There is no table; four chairs do for twice as many workers. The janitors, employed by Advance Building Maintenance, make $4.25 an hour, with no health benefits, sick days or vacation time.

“Before, one person cleaned one floor. Now it’s a floor and a half--45,000 square feet,” says janitor Adolfo Tipaz, 28, as he piles rags onto his cleaning cart. “We don’t get any breaks, even for lunch,” he says, a practice being challenged as illegal in a pending union lawsuit against Advance. The company said its practices are legal and that, like many businesses, it pays the minimum wage.

Standing amid ammonia bottles and boxes of bathroom tissue, Tipaz adds: “The company will never tell you your rights. This union is opening my eyes.”

Janitors, the union contends, often are treated like garbage by cleaning companies. Most building owners contract with janitorial companies rather than employ in-house crews--a trend that has allowed owners to slash their cleaning bills. Janitors are expected to scour the same square footage as the average-sized house every 20 minutes, a pace that often precludes breaks.

Union lawsuits allege that janitors are routinely asked to work up to four weeks for free as a “training period.” Other janitors contend that they have had to work 12 hours a day to earn eight hours pay, and they say they often are not provided gloves or face masks to protect against constant exposure to chemicals--which, because the bottles are sometimes unlabeled, the janitors must sniff to identify.

“We ask for gloves. We don’t get them,” said one worker at the Mattel factory, who blamed daily use of cleaning chemicals for open, festering sores on his hands.

Mattel’s Durik said no worker has filed such a complaint, adding: “We wouldn’t condone anyone having their health or safety jeopardized.”

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Workers such as Tipaz are trained to help implement SEIU’s strategy: to hit cleaning companies and building owners with an array of tactics so onerous that surrender becomes preferable to remaining non-union.

The union plies janitors with a three-page “Cal-OSHA questionnaire,” asking them to point out a host of violations, such as frayed vacuum cleaner electrical cords, lack of safety training, unlabeled chemicals or those labeled only in English, and a list of 27 possible ailments their job may have caused.

Organizers grill workers for evidence of sexual harassment or violations of wage and hour laws, and they send minority workers to apply for jobs to test for hiring discrimination. Cleaning crews have shown up en masse at zoning meetings when a building owner they are pressing to go union wants approval to erect a new building.

“This is a war,” said Rocio Saenz, a Justice for Janitors organizer in Los Angeles.

But the “Maalox moment” comes, usually on a daily basis, when hordes of janitors show up at targeted buildings bent on disruption and causing a public relations nightmare for building owners. There are sit-ins and marches in which--unlike other unions whose rank and file politely walk circles with signs outside--janitors scream, chant and bang drums as they snake through a building’s offices, risking trespass charges, and sometimes even piling trash in marbled building lobbies.

“Being polite doesn’t get you anywhere,” said Stephen Lerner, national director of Building Service Division Organizing for SEIU. He said the union creates excitement by appealing to a sense of dignity among workers, who speak of making $30 a night cleaning offices where, by day, lawyers make $300 an hour.

Workers’ resolve was evident in 1990 when 400 janitors staged a march from Beverly Hills to Century City against ISS International Service Systems Inc.

“You will not pass,” janitor Isabel del Real heard a Los Angeles police officer shout. She and other marchers pressed on. She said officers lashed out with batons and whacked pregnant women, older janitors, even children; two of her co-workers had blood flowing down their faces from head wounds. The aggressive action paid off and proved a crucial turning point for the union. Two weeks later, it had a contract with ISS.

“The strategy is attack, attack, attack,” del Real said of this and other mass arrests.

Justice for Janitors skips the slow process of seeking government-supervised union elections, saying the rules have been skewed in recent years to companies’ advantage. Instead, the organization hounds a cleaning firm until it recognizes the union. The technique, its leaders say, puts them in a better position to hammer out strong contracts. Strikes are used only as hit-and-run maneuvers to disrupt, putting members at less risk of being fired.

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“They pick a target and beat them into submission by whatever methods are necessary,” said Allen G. Siegel, legal counsel to Washington, D.C., cleaning concerns that are banding together to fight tactics he called vicious. Union members chained themselves to the front doors of his office buildings, and others burst into the law firm’s conference rooms, spooking clients with their shouts.

In the past two months, Mattel has weathered 23 union demonstrations, which feature janitors banging pots and pans outside its 15-story headquarters. Union officials have stomped into the building’s lobby, refusing to leave until they are granted an immediate audience with Mattel executives.

“These janitors don’t work under deplorable conditions, but in beautiful, modern buildings. We have not found the injustices the janitors speak of,” said Durik of Mattel. He added: “This is a free-market system. People can change jobs for better pay and benefits. In this country, you can leave your job if you are dissatisfied.”

“They are extortive,” said Vallen of Advance Building Maintenance, the union’s No. 1 Los Angeles target. The firm has paid $60,000 in legal fees to fend off union attacks and last year lost two cleaning contracts, worth $50,000 in combined monthly billings, when building owners came under pressure from union pension funds that help finance their business ventures.

Cleaning companies, Vallen said, can’t afford unionization: Cash-squeezed Los Angeles building owners, facing their highest vacancy rates in two decades, have seen rents plummet by as much as 40% in three years, slashing Advance’s pay by a like amount. One mid-Wilshire building owner told Vallen that going union would break him, increasing costs by $4,500 per month. Unionization, Vallen said, increases tenant costs and their incentives to locate elsewhere. Cleaning bills, according to Building Owners and Managers Assn. 1992 figures, consume twice as much of each rental dollar in union-dominated cities.

“New non-union companies are popping up all over the place. We have a wide open border with thousands streaming in who will work for nothing,” Vallen said.

Just eight years ago, building owners had few union worries. In the go-go 1980s, non-union “mop-and-bucket” firms cropped up to clean the new high-rises, tapping waves of low-paid illegal immigrants, most from war-torn Central America, to do the job for half the price.

Like many unions, the SEIU treated the immigrants as the enemy as they replaced previous janitors, most of them African-Americans. The state of the union became grim: Los Angeles membership plunged 77% from 1983 to 1987, down to 1,500. Since then, the union has won contracts with a dozen large companies who clean 350 buildings, boosting its Los Angeles membership to 7,000.

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On a recent afternoon, hundreds of janitors who marched through Westwood knew their mission: be obnoxious. “SI SE PUEDE!” (We can do it) they screamed faster and faster, ending the chant in a crescendo of clapping. Beginning at the gleaming Oppenheimer Tower, they stood amid neatly pruned begonia beds and rattled rock-filled cans. Security guards nervously peered from high-rise windows as the group approached each targeted building.

Finally, the crowd surged into one black-granite lobby, where the janitors made a deafening noise by whistling, banging drums and yelling. Strategically placed in the lead was janitor Silvia Vasquez, six months pregnant, her white seersucker dress billowing in front of her, and Blanca Salina, two children in tow, with 3-year-old daughter Nelly grasping her neck during the march.

“We’re not asking for the company car here,” said Esteban Urquieta between chants outside the mid-Wilshire building where he and other janitors have gone out on a temporary strike.

Since May, Urquieta has lived in a van with his wife and two children, unable with $616 in monthly earnings to amass the $1,500 he needs to get into an apartment. Fifteen years ago, the Mexican-American toiled alongside mostly African-American co-workers, making $7 an hour.

“Before, when life was more affordable, we made more, we had health benefits,” the gray-haired man fumed, stomping his white vinyl shoes in disgust. He looked ashamed as he added quietly: “I don’t want to take welfare.”

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From a dimly lit one-bedroom apartment where scraps of pink shower curtain cover the windows, Aura Canted said desperation brought her to the union’s door a year ago. Mustering a broad, calm smile as she sits on a threadbare love seat in her living room, she said: “I know with a union we will get more.”

Her longtime companion, who works at a building represented by the union, makes $6.72 an hour, has health and dental insurance, and receives paid sick days. Canted, who works for Marriott Corp. cleaning the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, makes 19% less and gets no benefits. Her $5 hourly wage brings home $776 a month; $550 goes to rent.

When she was 20, Canted watched the family hock its refrigerator to get her one-way bus fare out of Guatemala’s grinding poverty. Her first janitor job paid $3.35 an hour. She lived with 16 others in a one-room apartment; they took turns sleeping by day and night. Canted’s spot was a closet. To save money, she often walked home at 3 a.m. from the building she cleaned in Santa Monica to her Pico-Union apartment.

A decade after arriving, there is little improvement. Her two young children help her scrub houses on her days off; Canted sells pork-filled tamales she cooks and Avon products in snatches of free time. She recently pawned a ring for food. When her daughter, Mildred, suffered convulsions, her hands curled in paralysis, the hospital bill totaled $700. It took two years to pay it off.

As Marriott Corp.--mirroring moves by many businesses--has nearly halved its LACMA work force in the past year, Canted finds herself doing what she said is the job of two. She scrubs 46 bathrooms each day and replaces 125 rolls of toilet paper. “When I come out, my back is breaking,” said Canted, who is five months pregnant and works despite a doctor’s warning that it may cost her the child. Marriott officials, citing pending union litigation, declined comment.

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Labor officials debate how much of the janitors’ success can transfer to other organizing efforts. Unions, some said, thrive in industries such as janitorial services, where there is job growth; manufacturing and other areas are shrinking. Although such tactics may work for health care or other service industries, “if you are in an industrial park, banging drums does you no good. You have to affect production,” said Ernesto Medrano, western regional special representative for the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Despite the janitors’ early success, there is always a fresh crop of immigrants willing to come to the United States and work for less. To stem the flow, the SEIU and other unions have launched efforts to organize workers abroad.

“We must be eternally vigilant,” said Justice for Janitors national organizer Lerner. Snapping his fingers, he added: “At any time, a building can go non-union. Overnight.”

Bucking a Trend

Nationwide union membership has plummeted from its 1945 high of 35.5% of the labor force to 15.8% in 1992, but the Service Employees International Union’s janitorial membership has soared since the union launched its Justice for Janitors campaign in 1987. Now, about one in five of the nation’s 1 million janitors are SEIU union members.

While Union Membership Lags Overall . . . (In millions)* 1945: 35.5% of labor force ‘92: 15.8% of labor force +

. . . Drive to Unionize Janitors Thrives

Service Employees International Union janitorial membership 1992: 200,000 * Total non-agricultural labor force (Note: After 1983 excludes the unemployed) Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics