Lauren Martens doesn’t match the image of a hard-boiled labor activist. His meticulously polished shoes would blend into
any corporate board room, and he spent his early years as an environmentalist
But he is just the type of new blood the upstart Service Employees International Union seeks out. Local 105 hired Martens as political organizer in June as part of an effort to help lure workers who haven’t traditionally been drawn to organized labor.
“We are looking for folks who have a broader view about economic and social issues, because
at the end of the day social justice
is what we want to achieve,”
said Mitch Ackerman, SEIU Local
105 president.
Martens, 46, fills the bill.
When death squads were terrorizing
El Salvadoran peasants in
the 1980s, he joined a Chicago
group that educated the public
about conditions in Central
America.
As part of Neighbor to Neighbor’s
campaign, he lobbied Congress
to pressure Latin American governments for change.
In 1996, he went to work organizing
and lobbying for the Colorado
Environmental Coalition.
And in 1998, he began building a
coalition of 40 organizations
that are credited with selling the
FasTracks light-rail expansion
to Denver voters last year.
That skill at alliance-building
made him especially valuable to
the SEIU, Ackerman said. It and
The Teamsters last week defected
from the AFL-CIO.
The dissident unions believe
the federation is spending too little
money on grassroots organizing
and too much on supporting
politicians in efforts for pro-labor
legislation. They vowed to
reverse the steep decline in nationwide
union membership.
The SEIU has focused its new
efforts on the Southern and
Southwestern states, areas of
the country where unions have
not historically had great success.
Colorado now has about
9,000 members, for example,
but the SEIU hopes to enlist
thousands more. By building the
ranks, Martens said, unions will
naturally increase their political
and bargaining power.
Over the past nine years, Service
Employees International
Union has doubled its membership
to 1.8 million, a record unmatched
in the labor movement.
Much of the growth came about
by enlisting groups that traditionally
went unorganized, such
as nurses and janitors. It also
was the result of aggressive and
sometimes unorthodox campaigns
that used civil disobedience
and methods associated
with protest movements.
In 2003, for example, 1,000
SEIU members clogged Denver’s
streets during contract negotiations
for about 2,000 janitors.
The march brought traffic
to a standstill. While organizing
janitors at the Denver Tech Center
in the mid-1990s, about 50
members and supporters were
arrested for blocking traffic.
During other demonstrations
throughout the city, SEIU members
have gathered in front of
buildings and have attracted attention
by shaking cans filled
with BBs.
SEIU isn’t the only union to
use unconventional labor tactics,
but the service workers are
more likely than others to take
radical action, said Steve
Adams, president of the Colorado
AFL-CIO. “They don’t start
breaking heads, but they interrupt
the flow of the norm. I think
this is the new radicalism in
union organizing.”
Labor has been credited with
helping Democrats win control
of Colorado’s legislature last
year. Adams and the Colorado
AFL-CIO built coalitions with
big-money Democratic donors,
social and environmental
groups in what has been called
one of the labor movement’s finest
moments in recent years.
Martens has joined the union
at a time when that kind of community-
building may prove invaluable.
The splintering of the
AFL-CIO has caused some to
wonder if organized labor can
survive, but Martens and Ackerman
are optimistic that the
union locals will work together.
They will have to, Adams
warned. “If we allow it to blow
up at the local level the same
way it is blowing up at the national
level, there will be a diminished
labor movement.”
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
