Baptist Ministers, Civil Rights Leaders, Unite Behind Security Officers’ Contract Effort

Security Officers Begin Talks With L.A.’s Largest Security Companies, Real Estate Corporations

First-ever union contract could lift thousands of security officers and their families out of poverty

SEIU SOULA bargaining team, July 17 2007

LOS ANGELES – On the eve of security officers bargaining for their first-ever union contract, over fifty Baptist ministers and community leaders from South L.A. signed on to the ‘Stand For Security Coalition’ and committed to support security officers’ effort to win gains in wages, health care, and training. On Tuesday July 17, private security officers who keep the businesses and tenants in L.A’s tallest high rises safe started bargaining as members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation’s largest security officers union.

“Security officers have been struggling for a long time to lift ourselves and our families out of poverty, and this is our opportunity to do that by winning a strong contract,” said security officer Jackie Johnson.

To see the Stand For Security Coalition statement in support of Security officers click here

Nearly 70 percent of security officers in L.A. are African American and although they protect lives and multi-million dollar properties, they go home to L.A.’s most impoverished communities. If L.A.’s multibillion-dollar-a-year real estate industry paid security officers the same wages and benefits it has agreed to pay janitors, it would bring an estimated $50 million more a year into South Los Angeles, where most of the security officers live.

“Security officers have the support of their entire community, and we are committed to see that they win a fair contract that allows them not only to better protect lives and property, but to protect themselves and their families with living wages and affordable health care,” said Reverend Lewis Logan, pastor of Bethel AME Church and a leader in the Stand For Security Coalition. “We have marched, picketed, and gone to jail in support of security officers, and we will continue to do so until justice is won.”

More than 4,000 security officers that protect the top commercial buildings throughout Los Angeles County will bargain an area-wide master agreement with Securitas, Allied-Barton, ABM/ACSS, Guard Systems and Universal Protective Services. Taken together, these firms service more than 80% of L.A.’s commercial real estate with on-site security.

“We look forward to working together with the building owners so that security officers may enjoy the same wage and benefit standards and job security as those achieved by union janitors,”  said Faith Culbreath, President of SEIU Security Officers United in Los Angeles (SOULA) Local 2006. “The upcoming talks are an opportunity to raise standards throughout the entire commercial real estate industry.”

Only SEIU’s model of area-wide master agreements brings the stability to improve standards across the industry. Without the master contract, individual security firms would be put at an economic disadvantage in acting alone to raise standards.

If the 50,000 security officers across the country who will be at the bargaining table this year receive just a $1 increase in wages, along with family health care and paid leave, almost $500 million dollars would be infused into some of the nation’s most economically depressed neighborhoods each year.