SAN FRANCISCO – Security officers united in Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 24/7 voted overwhelmingly to approve a five-year pact with the area’s leading private security firms with higher wages and a family health care plan and career ladder that are the first of their kind. The new union contract is the best agreement ever achieved for private security officers anywhere in the nation and covers 2,000 security officers in San Francisco and 2,000 in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Total compensation across the Bay Area—including wages and family health care—will now rise an estimated average of 37% or $394 more per paycheck by 2012. The five-year contract is valued at more than an estimated $120 million.

Security officers working in San Francisco and the largest buildings in the East Bay will now have fully-paid individual health insurance through Kaiser and for the first time ever will have the option to add family coverage with an employee cap of $225 by the end of the contract. In addition, a seniority-based, career advancement process will now allow security officers stationed at smaller East Bay locations to move into the higher paying posts to achieve these same benefits.

“I’m thrilled with this outcome,” said Marcia Duncan a private security officer who served on the Bargaining Committee. “This contract means I’ll finally be able to care for my family in the way I’ve always wanted to.” Duncan, a single mother raising two daughters, has worked security for almost 20 years.

 “This contract is the new standard in the industry and is a model for other U.S. cities to follow,” said Mayor Newsom, who was instrumental in bringing about the settlement after more than five months of labor unrest including the West Coasts’ first-ever strike of private guards in September. The Mayor encouraged building owners to get involved in contract talks to lend what he called, “moral authority.”

National Implications

National private security firms Securitas, Allied Barton, ABM Security and Universal Protection Services that negotiated the contract for Bay Area guards will also meet the security officers’ union SEIU at negotiating tables

in major cities nationwide this year and next. Contract negotiations for 4,000 guards in Los Angeles and 750 guards in Seattle are already underway. Minneapolis contract talks will begin in early 2008, followed by Washington, D.C., and Boston. SEIU is the nation’s largest security officers union, representing 55,000 nationwide.

“This groundbreaking contract leads the way for hundreds of thousands of security officers all across the country,” said Mike Garcia, Vice President of SEIU Property Services Division, who led the union negotiating team. “A union contract with wages you can raise a family on and family health care will help lift security workers up out of poverty while also improving public safety. We couldn’t be more pleased.”

SEIU’s national “Stand for Security” campaign is the largest organizing effort of mostly African American workers in history, with the potential to impact the lives of up to at least 200,000 security workers and their families nationwide. That’s hundreds of thousands more than the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organized in the 1920s and 1930s, a watershed moment that helped form the black middle class.

Private security is one of the top ten fastest growing industries nationwide, with more than one million private security officers working in America today. That’s more than twice as many police officers. The private security industry is dominated by African American workers. Well over half the Bay Area security officers and nearly 70% of Los Angeles security workers are black.

Community Reaction

“Conditions for African Americans in our country are abysmal, and even San Francisco is not immune, but this security contract shows what we can achieve when we work together,” said Rev. Amos C. Brown, President of the San Francisco branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “We need security jobs to by good jobs for members of our community and this union contract makes that dream a reality.”

Best Contract in SEIU Property Services Division History

“At a time when most Americans are losing their health care coverage, SEIU members are winning access to quality, affordable health care for themselves and their entire families,” said Valarie Long, SEIU Property Service Division Director.

The SEIU Local 24/7 contract is also the best, in terms of wage and family health care increases, in the history of the SEIU Property Services division that represents 255,000 members nationwide. The contract builds on the victories of other SEIU workers this year, including a new five-year contract for 12,000 janitors represented by SEIU Local 615 in Boston that includes a $3.00 wage increase. Boston janitors united in SEIU already receive family health care, as they do in most major U.S. cities as a result of the Justice for Janitors campaigns that the Stand for Security campaign is modeled after.