Security Officers, African American Community Leaders, Mayor Villaraigosa Announce the Formation of SOULA

First Ever Contract Negotiations for 4,000 Security Officers to Begin, Leading the Way for up to 50,000 Nationwide

Equality with Union Janitors Could Bring Up to an Estimated $50 Million More into South Los Angeles Communities, Where Most Security Officers Live
MAY 20, 2007 -- After more than five years of struggle against opposition from some of the largest real estate corporations in the country, thousands of private security officers who keep the businesses and tenants in L.A’s tallest high rises safe and secure announced they have formed a union with Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation’s largest security officers union. The announcement is the first of several expected across the country over the next few weeks.

Los Angeles security officers are now set to negotiate a first-ever contract, leading the way for up to 50,000 nationwide in the effort to turn dead-end security jobs into good jobs with decent wages and access to affordable family health care.

The announcement signals a victory in an effort to fight poverty conditions in America’s private security industry that is dominated by African American workers. National efforts underway among private security officers are the largest of their kind since the Pullman Porters formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925 to help create the black middle class.

“We’ve won our union and now we must win a strong contract to lift ourselves and our families out of poverty,” said Juanita Burroughs, a security officer and leader in the effort to form a union with SEIU.

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.

“We will not rest until justice is won for the security officers of Los Angeles and their families – our neighbors and brothers and sisters in the struggle for social and economic justice,” said Rev. Dr. Lewis E. Logan II, Senior Pastor of Bethel A.M.E. Church and one of the leaders of the Stand for Security Coalition. Local clergy and community members, many from South Los Angeles, formed coalition nearly four years ago to support security officers’ union campaign. “We will be with you all the
way to make sure you get the contract you deserve,” Logan pledged.

Until recently, L.A’s leading corporate landlords denied security officers’ civil right and freedom to form the union of their choice with SEIU. But Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called on the city’s real estate industry to upgrade security in buildings and improve working conditions for the city’s security officers and was instrumental in brokering an agreement between Maguire Properties and the union last year that led to withdrawal of the building owners’ opposition to the security officers’ efforts to form a union with SEIU.

“Security officers' victory today is not only a pathway out of poverty for thousands of low-wage workers, it will raise standards all throughout the region's real estate industry. Everybody’s going to work together to improve security – the building owners, the security companies and the union. I encourage the business community to get behind this effort,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.

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.

“Today’s breakthrough creates a point of unity among the various building owners and multiple security contractors; by achieving representation in more than 700 buildings throughout Los Angeles county, we can truly create a level playing field for the entire commercial real estate industry,” said Faith Culbreath, President of SEIU Security Officers United in Los Angeles (SOULA) Local 2006. “Now we fully expect the building owners to play a productive role in bargaining by working with us so that security officers may enjoy the same wage and benefit standards and job security as those achieved by the janitors,” Culbreath said.

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.

“By working together we can reduce the high turnover, improve training and turn these dead-end jobs into good jobs that workers can be proud of and raise a family on.” said Valarie Long, SEIU Property Service Division Director. “What starts here in L.A. will have enormous implications for thousands of African American workers in the security industry nationwide,” Long said. 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.