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| Habiba Abdikairm makes noise downtown as security officers and allies blocked Fifth Ave. to highlight their conflict with employers over health care benefits. Photo by Luke McGuff |
In a bid to get a first-ever union contract with their employers, about 200 security guards staged a rush-hour street blockade
Feb. 25 at Fifth Avenue and Columbia Street in which Seattle police arrested two participants.
The guards are members of the Service Employees
International
Union’s Local
6, which has spent a year trying
to negotiate a contract for a total of 750 new members who are unionizing at four security firms: ABABM, Allied Barton,
Northwest Protective Services
and Securitas. The 40-minute blockade was staged in front of the Columbia Center, says SEIU organizer Marilyn Mitcham, to target
ABABM, which provides security guards for the Columbia Center and is expected to return to the bargaining table with the others on Feb. 26
Mitcham says representatives of the four employers walked out of a Feb. 6 negotiating
session after union members refused to consider a revised health care offer. In January, she says, the security firms offered to put $156 toward each employee’s health coverage. On Feb. 6, they pulled the offer back to $125 — a backstep, she says, that the guards, who make an average of $12 an hour, can’t afford on plans that run as much as $325 per month.
Mitcham calls it bad-faith bargaining — one of seven charges of unfair labor practices that she says SEIU filed Feb. 25 with the National Labor Relations Board. Others include claims that one or more of the employers are harassing union members
and instituting illegal work rules. The union previously filed a charge that the security firms refused to provide requested information.
The 750 new members have joined the union since 2005, when SEIU kicked off a campaign to organize about 1,000 security guards in the Seattle/Bellevue area. Finalizing a first contract can often take years, and Heath Manley, a security guard with Northwest Protective Services, says the two sides are close to an agreement on wages.
“But we’re far apart on health care,” he says, “and we haven’t even touched anything else as far as benefits go, so we’re still a ways away.
A
representative of Northwest Protective Services did not return a phone call. |
