SEIU 32BJ "Fastest-Growing" Local

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

     SEIU Local 32BJ is a local on the move. Literally. When I showed up for an interview at their 11th Street offices recently, local staff was in the midst of reorganizing the office to accommodate the local, which is already outgrowing the space they moved into just over a year ago.
     Hardly surprising, for a local that’s “one of the fastest-growing in SEIU,” according to Jaime Contreras, Local 32BJ Capital Area Director of the Capitol District area local. Known as SEIU Local 82 before its merger with the New York City-based Local 32BJ, the Capitol District local now represents nearly 9,000 service workers in the metro Washington area, and has doubled its membership in just four years. The local is now negotiating contracts now that will cover 11,000 members – a major rally is planned for mid-December -- and also has five organizing campaigns going, including a nearly-4-year drive to organize area security guards, most of whom work for just four major employers, who have all agreed to recognize the union, “which will add another 1,200 members to the local,” Contreras told Union City, “bringing union density to 75% in the DC security industry.”
     The local’s militant roots were planted deep in the Justice for Janitors campaign in the late ‘80s that culminated in the legendary blockading of the 14th Street bridge, and the original local – SEIU 525 – won higher wages and benefits for thousands of low-wage office cleaners at area universities and commercial office buildings. In 2001 the local, which was now known as Local 82, organized 600 cleaners in Baltimore and in 2002 added 1,500 more in Montgomery County, though the vast majority – some 70% -- of the local’s membership still lives and works in the District.
     With a high proportion of immigrant members – 65% are Latino – the local has been on the forefront of the immigrant rights movement, with Contreras himself a movement leader who not only heads up the 32BJ’s Capitol District local but helped found and lead the National Capital Immigration Coalition, a group of organizations that advocate, educate, and mobilize the immigrant community in the DC metro area toward citizenship and civic participation.
     Elected District Chair of SEIU 32BJ in 2001, Contreras came to the movement early. Fleeing El Salvador death squads – his father was an ambulance driver who sometimes gave rides to guerillas – Contreras’ family moved in Washington in the late ‘80s and the teenaged Contreras followed his brother’s footsteps as a cleaner in an M Street office building. “I was the only bilingual worker there,” Contreras laughs, “so I was quickly recruited as an organizer for the union.” After helping organize the workers in his building and a 3-year stint in the Navy, Contreras returned to work for the union and, having married the local’s Organizing Director, Maria Naranjo -- the couple have two children, aged 2 and 5 -- he can be fairly said to be wedded to the union movement. - report/photo by Chris Garlock