Women Gaining a Toehold in Leadership of Southland Trade Unions : Labor: Angela Keefe is the latest to break into the male-dominated ranks.

SANTA ANA —  Running a union is still largely a man’s game.

But slowly that’s beginning to change. In the 1980s, a handful of Southern California women rose to the leadership of big, local unions.

In June they were joined by one more: Angela Keefe, who’s unusual not just because she’s a woman but because she’s only 29.

Keefe beat a male incumbent in an election for president of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, Local 681, which covers Orange County and Long Beach. The local has 5,000 full-time members.

It’s not clear whether Keefe’s victory is part of a trend. Nobody, in fact, keeps statistics on how many women hold union leadership positions in the region or the nation. But many women agree that the labor movement, like much of the rest of society, lags in getting women into top jobs.

“The higher you go in the labor movement, the more male-dominated it is,” says Keefe.

Sure, women have made some inroads. They have led unions, for instance, whose members have until recently been mostly women, such as the flight attendants’ and nurses’ unions. Some have been elected not so much because they’re women as because they are part of or have aligned themselves with another group that’s traditionally been shut out of union leadership in Southern California--Latinos.

But in industries where there are traditionally few women--the building trades, for instance--union leadership is still almost exclusively male.

So where change is coming--though some women say not enough--is usually in the service industry unions, where quite often neither sex is a big majority of the membership. It’s in those organizations that women are being elected to lead union locals. And that, of course, is the first step in moving up the ladder.

It usually takes a long time to climb, though.

Consider the experience of Lenore Miller, who started out as a secretary for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union 34 years ago. It wasn’t until 1986 that she was elected the first woman to head a large U.S. labor organization. The department store union now has 140,000 members in 35 states.

“We find more and more women are coming into leadership positions in the union,” says Miller, “because more women are working these days. But just a glance at the numbers will show you that women are underrepresented in leadership roles everywhere. The old view of traditional roles dies slowly.”

The biggest Southern California local led by a woman is probably Los Angeles’ Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union Local 11, which has 11,000 full-time members.

“As much as I’m a trade unionist first, you only have to look at the statistics to see women are not represented as they should be,” says Maria Elena Durazo, who has headed the local for three years.

Since the hotel and restaurant union is nearly two-thirds men, Durazo needed their support to win. While all hotel housekeepers are women, for instance, most restaurant kitchen workers--and most servers in fine restaurants--are men.

Many male union officers agree that women aren’t represented in union leadership in proportion to their numbers in the work force.

“It’s still rare to find a woman leading a local,” says Don Mear, a business representative for the Operating Engineers’ local in Anaheim. “It’s still a good ol’ boy network.”

Women union leaders are loath to criticize the labor movement in these dark days, when membership is falling off and the federal government’s labor regulations have been tilted toward employers. Union membership in the private sector fell to a mere 12% of the work force last year from 40% in the 1950s.

But many say the lack of women leaders is disappointing--especially considering that unions are supposed to be far more attuned than private industry to issues of fairness and diversity.

Some of these new women leaders, meanwhile, turn out to be more aggressive than their male predecessors in pushing a labor agenda.

That’s the case with the Hotel and Restaurant union local in Los Angeles. And it is a big reason why Keefe got elected in Orange County.

Her election, in fact, wasn’t really decided on the issue of gender at all. It was more about attitude, about Keefe wanting to get tougher with a couple of employers--the posh Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach and the big Inn at the Park hotel in Anaheim--that are bogged down in contract negotiations with the union.

That contrasted with former President Steven A. Beyer’s more measured, moderate approach. Keefe beat Beyer in a fairly close election in late June. She took office in early July.

Durazo, in Los Angeles, is no shrinking violet either. Her local caused an uproar recently when it circulated a video called “City on the Edge” that said Los Angeles is an unsafe place to visit. This in the middle of an ugly contract fight with the city’s big hotels--including the Westin Bonaventure and the Biltmore--over health benefits.

The video may have worked: The union announced what it said was a favorable settlement last month.

And there was another issue besides gender in both women’s elections--race, which labor officials say is a far more important issue in Southern California union politics these days.

Southern California’s work force is becoming increasingly Latino, especially in the kind of low-wage jobs the hotel and restaurant industries specialize in.

Over the last 20 years the composition of the hotel workers union has changed to reflect that. It’s gone from predominantly white to a Latino majority. Now that change is starting to show up in the leadership of these locals too.

Durazo, in fact, beat an Anglo--perhaps only incidentally male--when she was first elected president in 1988. While the local is 70% Latino, the former leaders refused to print the local’s newspaper in Spanish as well as English and otherwise slighted Latino members, she says.

“Sex was only an issue indirectly,” Durazo says, “in the sense, I think, that being a woman got across the point that people were ready for a change.”

Keefe, although she’s Anglo, speaks fluent Spanish and ran on a slate replete with Latinos. Her opponent, on the other hand, had not a single Latino candidate on his slate. Keefe played heavily on race in the election.

It’s not particularly women, in fact, but Latinos that unions are targeting for recruiting drives in Southern California.

It may be fertile ground. Latinos are one of the least-unionized groups of workers in the United States, says Jack Otero, president of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement in Washington.

Meanwhile, lots of obstacles remain for women in the labor movement, much as they do in private industry.

“When I go to Labor Council meetings in Orange County, the majority of people who attend are still men,” says Linda Porter, the part-time president of the 600-member Communications Workers of America local in Walnut.

“One of the biggest problems for women is, if you have children, how many nights can you spend at meetings?” says Porter, an AT&T; employee.

“And believe me, a lot of this job involves night meetings.”