Photo from SEIU Local 32BJ
“There are some fundamentals which the employer should know by this time but which many persistently forget...The enemy of labor is capital; the enemy of capital is labor and other capital.”
- Black Diamond, a coal industry publication, 1910, Quoted by John Bowman
During a period when union membership in the United States has continued its precipitous decline, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ has been growing steadily, having successfully organized more than 100,000 workers since 1999. The innovative strategies and tactics used by SEIU’s Justice for Janitors (JforJ) campaigns explain important aspects of this increase, but usually overlooked is the role that trigger mechanisms have played in this growth. Triggers are an organizing tactic that help facilitate unionization by binding employers in a given labor market together via an agreement that ensures that the bulk of employers will go union at once, or not all. The trigger takes the competitive pressures that capitalists face seriously, recognizing that unionization has costs, and that increased costs are a problem for an individual firm if its competitors are non-union. Since 2000, 32BJ has incorporated the tactic into campaigns up and down the east coast, successfully organizing workers in cleaning services and security. Since 2014, 32BJ has adapted the economic logic of the trigger into a political tactic that has contributed to the organization of more than 20,000 subcontracted airport service workers. Given 32BJ’s success amidst failure, it’s worth exploring what they have done, as it might provide a model for other unions.
Photo from SEIU Local 32BJ
From Poverty Wages to Union Wages: Janitors and Security Officers
For the last 25 years 32BJ has made organizing a core part of its mission. It allocates between 20 and 30 percent of its budget to organizing, which amounted to approximately $15 million in 2021. This spending helped strengthen the union’s research capacity, which has been crucial for identifying industries in regional markets that can be targeted for organizing. This targeted approach to organizing differs from “hot shop” organizing that often finds unions following leads and tips into industries and sectors with little thought given to the likelihood of winning and getting a first contract, let alone a contract that actually raises standards. Like most locals in SEIU, 32BJ shuns this approach and focuses on targeting regionally defined economic sectors with the goal of organizing workers in the entire labor market. This whole market strategy, which informs SEIU’s JforJ campaigns, aims to force firms in a geographically defined market into a multi-employer agreement that sets wage and benefit standards for the entire labor market. Such a strategy levels the playing field between firms, eliminating the low wage option for cleaning companies, and the low-cost option for the corporations subcontracting cleaning services.
Organizing workers in a whole market is not easy, and over the years SEIU developed tactics to facilitate such organizing. Industrial relations scholar Kyoung-Hee Yu notes that initially the focus was on securing neutrality and card check agreements from firms, but JforJ quickly learned that this was difficult. As long as such agreements increased the likelihood of unionization and higher costs, contractors faced the very real threat that building owners might simply replace them with a lower cost non-union competitor. Consequently, every individual cleaning contractor had an economically rational reason to avoid agreeing to remain neutral and accept card check, since to do otherwise was to risk being a “sucker” who unilaterally agreed to terms that would give other firms a competitive advantage.
To solve this collective action problem and ensure group cooperation, Yu reports that the SEIU legal department developed an institutional mechanism in the form of the trigger agreement that assured each contractor that they would only have to abide by a neutrality agreement and card check if a critical mass of other contractors, typically 55% to 60%, agreed to do the same. This functioned to ensure that no one would be a “sucker” and get flipped for a lower cost contractor. Over time, the trigger went beyond neutrality and card check to include what former National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Fred Feinstein has described as “general understandings about future negotiations if recognition rights [were] established.” By broadening its scope, the trigger addressed employers’ fears regarding the costs of unionization. As Stephen Lerner, an architect of the JforJ campaign explained, “After a contractor agreed to go union, SEIU would not raise wages until a majority of its competitors also went union, ensuring no contractor was put at a competitive disadvantage.”
By taking the competitive pressures that contractors face seriously, and linking the fate of companies in a given labor market together to ensure that no firm will be undercut by non-union competition, the trigger makes unionization more palatable to employers. Regardless of how a given contractor feels about unions, they at least know that union wages and benefits will be borne by the industry as a whole, or not all. Steven Greenhouse, reporting on the use of the trigger in New Jersey, noted that one large contractor praised the trigger mechanism, telling him that ''[o]nce you have a majority signed on, everyone is on the same playing field, and everyone can work together.” He went on to suggest that “[o]nce you get this going, everyone else will come into the program.'' Such sentiment from employers is important to note because it speaks to how the trigger reduces employer opposition to unions, which research has demonstrated is a major impediment to unionization.
The whole market strategy combined with aggressive SEIU organizing and the trigger mechanism has resulted in a slew of organizing victories for 32BJ. In 2004, over 5,000 workers were organized in North Jersey, significantly increasing wages and winning health care for full time workers. In 2006, a trigger was part of a one-year campaign to organize 2,000 janitors in the suburbs of Philadelphia and 1,000 in South Jersey and Wilmington, Delaware. In northern Virginia, where non-union contractors in a right to work state posed a threat to the union standards in Washington DC, 32BJ’s campaign used a trigger mechanism to organize over 5,000 janitors. Most recently, in 2021 the trigger was crucial for organizing over 2,000 janitors in Miami, which is in another right to work state. Beyond cleaning services, 32BJ has used the trigger in new and largely unorganized sectors of the economy such as security. By 2022, they had organized over 38,000 security officers in almost all major markets where 32BJ represents janitors including Boston, New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore and DC.
Photo from SEIU Local 32BJ
From Poverty Wages to Union Wages: Airport Workers
Since 2011, 32BJ has launched campaigns at airports up and down the East Coast. These campaigns target the tens of thousands of workers who are employed by firms that subcontract with the major airlines, providing services such as baggage handling, wheelchair transport, and cabin cleaning. When the campaigns began, most of these workers made the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour with few if any benefits. Recognizing that the subcontracting system at the airports resembled cleaning services, with fierce competition between companies seeking contracts with the airlines, Local 32BJ started these campaigns intending to use a trigger mechanism to ensure that unionized firms were not placed at a competitive disadvantage that would lead to the airlines simply switching to non-union contractors. In interviews conducted for my current research project, Rob Hill, SEIU 32BJ’s Director of Organizing recalled that during the first campaign at the New York/New Jersey airports, the union began with a trigger, but then realized that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had the right to “set a mandate for wages and benefits.” Given the power of the Port Authority, 32BJ “could tell contractors that in exchange for card check recognition and labor peace, all economics would be bargained with the authority, with the union willing to live with whatever wage rate it could win politically.” The Port Authority’s mandate would function like a trigger, leveling the playing field and ensuring that no company was at a competitive disadvantage if it recognized the union.
With the new strategy, workers engaged in a two-pronged effort, organizing to win majorities at each company, while at the same time building the political capacity to pressure political stakeholders. This approach proved effective and in 2016, 32BJ bargained its first contract for 8,000 airport workers at LaGuardia, JFK and Newark airports. The contract only pertained to working conditions, health and safety issues, just cause and other such matters. Wages were set by the Port Authority, which initially boosted wages from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. In 2018, a new policy was adopted that regularly bumped up wages, reaching $19 in 2023. These increases covered over 40,000 workers at the airports, including the 8,000 BJ members. Beyond wages, the state of New York passed legislation providing health care for airport workers in 2020, and the following year New Jersey followed suit. SEIU 32BJ has since won similar victories for over 20,000 airport workers in Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, Washington DC, Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
Photo from SEIU Local 32BJ
Organizing the Unorganized
SEIU 32BJ’s success in the midst of failure is not due solely to the militant comprehensive campaigns pioneered by JforJ. The whole market strategy, the trigger mechanism, and sectoral wage setting through political power are also key ingredients to their success. By recognizing that “the enemy of capital is labor and other capital,” 32BJ’s strategy and tactics change the economic calculation of employers, reducing their opposition to union recognition, since they know that the bulk of the market will go union together, or not at all. By being attentive to the economic pressures that unionized companies face 32BJ has improved the lives of workers while building the power of the labor movement.
