SEIU Houston Janitor Victory

The SEIU organizing drive among janitors in Houston is a success! What's interesting about the victory--other than the fact that it brings in 5,000 new members in the hard-to-organize South--is the way the victory was pulled off.

Check out these two paragraphs:

The service employees, which led a breakaway of four unions from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. last summer, has used several unusual tactics in Houston, among them lining up the support of religious leaders, pension funds and the city's mayor, Bill White, a Democrat. Making the effort even more unusual has been the union's success in a state that has long been hostile to labor.

"It's the largest unionization campaign in the South in years," said Julius Getman, a labor law professor at the University of Texas. "Other unions will say, 'Yes, it can be done here.' "

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