A huge loss for labor and the left

Miguel Contreras, the head of the LA County Federation of Labor, died on Friday. Under his leadership, LA had the largest growth in union membership of any area in the country. He ran a genuine grassroots political machine that would take out bad Democrats in the primary while at the same time broadening labor's coalition. His success in California was praised as a potential organizing and political model for labor nationwide.

I was lucky to briefly work with him; though I did not know him well, he was a friendly, funny guy who made everyone in the room feel like they belonged and brought new people into the fight for workers' rights and social justice.

Leader Who Restored Labor's Clout in L.A. Dies

Miguel Contreras, the son of migrant farmworkers who grew to be one of Los Angeles' most powerful labor leaders and a dominant force in city politics, died late Friday evening of an apparent heart attack.

Contreras, who worked the arid fields of the Central Valley as a boy, re-energized a sputtering Southern California labor movement struggling to regain relevancy.

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In 1994, he was tapped as the federation's political director and immediately sought to reshape the unions' role. Contreras applied himself to winning over the often-quarreling local union leaders and insinuating himself into the city's power structure.

At a time when the national labor movement has struggled, Los Angeles' unions have racked up a remarkable number of victories: securing a living wage ordinance in the city, winning substantial wage increases for workers and beating back a state initiative aimed at limiting the collection of union dues for political purposes, among other measures.

Since Contreras was elected secretary-treasurer of the federation in 1996 — becoming the first nonwhite to win the seat — the unions' ranks have grown by 125,000 to more than 800,000, an increase fueled mostly by the city's burgeoning Latino immigrant population."

People across the country look at L.A. as a model of success," said Anna Burger, of the Service Employees International Union.