Service Employees' International Union (SEIU) SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign is perhaps the most successful model to date for organizing and winning contracts for immigrant workers. Under Justice for Janitors, SEIU has managed to organize over 35,000 worer 35,000 workers, mostly immigrants, in less than a decade. Organizing activity under this campaign has been most dynamic and successful in Los Angeles, San Francisco, California's Silicon Valley, Washington, DC., Hartford, Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee. The success of the Justice for Janitors campaign's nontraditional methods-a combination of worker mobilization, community-based work, civil disobedience and strategic campaigns, has inspired many other unions to organize immigrant workers. SEIU is also organizing immigrant workers in other industries, such as health care, ambulance services, amusement and recreation parks. The SEIU also elected its first top officer of Latin American origin, Executive Vice President for the Western Region Eliseo Medina. Medina, a Chicano who worked with Cesar Chavez in the UFW, is responsible for the SEIU's organizing campaign on the West Coast and for sup- porting the union's organizing of its health care local in Puerto Rico, United Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) UNITE, a merger of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers (ACTWU) and the International Ladies Garment Workers (ILGWU), has been orga- nizing immigrant workers in the garment and tex- tile industry, light manufacturing, industrial laun- dries and retail trades. Recently, the UNITE! union has been particularly successful "" in organizing and winning first con- tracts for immigrant workers in manufacturing and distribution in Texas. For example, in 1995 over 1,000 workers-most of them immigrants-at Foktajek, a windows manufacturer located in Fort Worth, won their first contract after a year of being organized by UNITE (at the time the ACTWU). Recently, UNITE has been organizing poultry work- ers in the South and the Southwest. The union also has C0mmUni~ty-based organizing pr ojects such a s its Garment Workeirs' Justice Centers in New York City, Los Angeles and Sa San Francisco, where workers come for advice about wage-and- hour complaints, organizing committee meetings, literacy classes and English classes. UNITE has a national campaign to abolish sweatshops in the gar- ment industry. The program focus is to harness pub- lic horror about sweatshops to build pressure on retailers to o take responsibility for conditions in their suppliers' factories in the United States and abroad. United Farm Workers (UFW) The United Farm Workers Union is historically one of the most inspiring and-despite its small size- influential unions among Latino trade unionists. While its cause may no longer be as fashionable as it was when leg- endary farm-worker leader Cesar Chavez exhorted urban consumers not to buy grapes, the UFW under Arturo Rodriguez and Dolores Huerta is actively organizing again. The union has expanded its organizing from its base in California to the states of Arizona, Washington, Texas and Florida. Since April 1994, the UFW has won 13 representation elections in a row covering 5,000 workers, and has successfully renego- tiated dozens of contracts. One of the biggest con- tracts was with the country's largest rose grower, Bear Creek Production Co. in Wasco, California, which gained family medical and pension benefits, an 8% pay raise, nine holidays, and grievance and seniority systems. More recently the union obtained a contract for workers at the Chateau Ste. Michelle winery in Washington State, and is contemplating two major campaigns with its former rival, the Teamsters, to organize immigrant workers employed by Washington apple growers and by California strawberry growers. Its current campaign to organize strawberry workers in California has the active backing of the new AFL-CIO leadership. Communications Workers of America (CWA) CWA was the union behind the organizing of Spanish-speaking telephone operators at U.S. Sprint's "La Conexi6n Familiar." When the union's organizing drive began, the company closed down the business. That led to a campaign against Sprint, in support of the rights of the dismissed workers. The campaign was joined by the Mexican telephone workers union (STRM), and a coalition of Latino civil rights groups. A case against Sprint has been filed under the NAFTA side agreements, and is still pending. United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) These two unions, together with community and religious groups, have formed the National Poultry Workers Alliance to organize about 50,000 poultry workers in the South. A growing number of immigrant workers can be found in the poultry industry, and the Alliance has set its sights on them. The Alliance won an organizing drive on July 12 at Case Farms in Morganton, N.C. Many of the 600 workers employed there were immigrant workers from Guatemala or Mexico; they voted 337 to 183 to join the laborers. [See "Profile of an Organizer: Yanira Merino," p. 30]. The Laborers have also increased their orga- nizing in the Northeast. They recently won a contract and organizing campaign among 1,200 asbestos-removal workers in New York City, mostly Latinos and recent Polish immigrants. International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) Under the new leadership of Ron Carey, the Teamsters, who represent many first and second- generation immigrant workers, have become more active on Latino labor issues. The IBT has been trying to organize tomato-processing plants like Tomatech, which has 500 workers, mostly Mexicans and Mexican Americans in California, and hotels with a largely immigrant workforce in Florida. This year, the union announced plans to organize food growers, processing and distribution workers in Washington State and California, and is exploring a partnership with the United Farm Workers in those efforts. The Teamsters have also been very active on the NAFTA fight. Under the leadership of Chicano national vice president John Riojas of San Antonio, they have formed strategic alliances with truck dri- vers from Mexico who belong to independent unions in order to assert their labor rights, and have successfully challenged the implementation of the NAFTA agreement in the transporation industry. Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) The hotel workers union is also organizing work- sites with significant numbers of immigrant workers, using community-organizing strategies. The union has been organizing 25 nonunion hotels around the Los Angeles airport, which employ a total of 7,000 workers. The organizing campaign involves house vis- its to 2,000 workers--mostly immigrants--who live in Lennox, an unincorporated one-square-mile section of Los Angeles County right under the airport's land- ing approach. United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) UE has had successful organizing drives among Latino workers in Milwaukee and in California in which trade unionists from Mexico have participat- ed. The union has also engaged in a lot of cross-bor- der labor organizing and has run joint training ses- sions with the Authentic Labor Front (FAT) of Mexico. Together with the Teamsters and a few other U.S. unions, the UE helped establish a worker center for the training of Mexican organizers in the maquila sector of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
