04:41 PM PDT on Thursday, July 22, 2004

By JIM KLOCKOW / KING5.com

SEATTLE - As 9-11 Commissioners warn that another terror attack on the U.S. is likely, some in Washington state are warning that private security efforts are a virtual race to the bottom.

"It's now been three years since Sept. 11 and the reality is there's been no major overhaul in private security standards," said Andrew McDonald, a spokesman for the Service Employees International Union.

The fix, according to the union, is to unionize Puget Sound-area security workers -- most of whom are not members of any union -- under the SEIU.

Others say that while there's always room to improve security, the SEIU report's recommendations are more about union membership than improving security and could, in fact, hurt security.

The SEIU issued a report Thursday that says private security in Seattle is marked by minimal and inconsistent training, low pay and very high turnover among the people that are supposed to be keeping buildings safe.

The starting wage for security officers in Seattle is $8.62 and the mean wage is $11.02, according to the report. And the jobs often come with only minimal benefits.

"For most buildings, there's no requirement for site-specific training. There's no difference between the Bank of America tower and a barn in Eastern Washington," McDonald said.

All this translates into poor security, according to the report, for the many private and public buildings where security is provided by private companies.

Better wages and benefits, according to the report, will lead to significantly less turnover than the current industry standard of between 100 and 300 percent.

The resulting workers will know the buildings and the tenants where they work better and will also have better training.

"Basically, you take out that competition over labor costs and it becomes a competition over quality," McDonald said.

The SEIU has friends in King County Executive Ron Sims, County Council member Nick Licata and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, who were among the officials present at Seattle's Union Station when the group delivered its assessment.

There's some merit to some of the SEIU arguments, according to Jim Stumbles, president and CEO of Seattle-based Northwest Protective Service, Inc., one of the few union-shop security companies in Washington.

Stumbles said that although the interest in security increased after Sept. 11, the struggling economy made companies looking for security services more likely to give the job to the lowest bidder, which drives down wages.

But Stumbles also sees problems with the SEIU effort.

Northwest Protective Service workers are unionized, but not under the SEIU. Northwest's workers are represented by the International Union Security, Police, Fire Professionals of America, or SPFPA, which represents only guards and no other workers.

The SEIU, on the other hand, represents not just security workers, but janitors, nurses and some other service workers.

Stumbles and others see that as a recipe for problems, for instance, if janitors who could decide to strike are represented by the same union as the guards who would be in the position to protect the a building if they did. Would the guards cross the picket line?

"We've had a number of clients who've told us, 'if you become a mixed union, we'll drop you flat'." Stumbles said.

Building owners are also able to negotiate the level of experience guards they contract with have, according to Rod Kauffman, executive vice-president of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Seattle and King County.

Kauffman thinks it's probably true that building owners on the West Coast may not have done as much as there East Coast counterparts in part because of the perception that the threat is not as great here.

But there is more careful evaluation being done of where the true threats are, Kauffman said, and companies that need a higher level of protection are more likely to negotiate that and to pay for it.