Labor isn't entirely dead

Good news outta Houston.

Union organizers have obtained what they say is majority support in one of the biggest unionization drives in the South in decades, collecting the signatures of thousands of Houston janitors.

In an era when unions typically face frustration and failure in attracting workers in the private sector, the Service Employees International Union is bringing in 5,000 janitors from several companies at once. With work force experts saying that unions face a slow death unless they can figure out how to organize private-sector workers in big bunches, labor leaders are looking to the Houston campaign as a model.

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.' "

Mr. Getman predicted that the Houston effort would embolden other unions to take their chances with ambitious drives in the South, although success could prove difficult because many companies will continue to fight unionization efforts, and many workers still shy away from unions.

Not sure how replicable this will be for other workers. Janitors have a remarkably strong card they can play when they begin to organize -- tenants. It only takes a couple of days for an office building to stink like an early 20th century tenemant when no one is taking out the trash or cleaning the bathrooms (my experience is that the tonier the building/tenant, the more boorish the hygiene). And since janitorial services are handled primarily by a few huge companies nationwide, the service workers union realized that they could keep those companies neutralized in the fight by threatening sympathy strikes in Chicago, LA, etc.

Property owners are not nearly so organized. Meanwhile, their tenants mix fear of watching the garbage can in the lunch room overflow with genuine sympathy for the women they barely nod to as they're leaving for the evening.