Labor, Politicians Praise Contreras

Presidents of unions representing truck drivers, homecare workers, city employees, janitors and supermarket checkers made their way to console relatives of the longtime Los Angeles County labor leader.

There too was Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), who worked as Contreras' political director before running for office. There was state Sen. Gilbert Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who first won office with the backing of a coalition of labor, immigrants and Latinos that would become the model for the state Democratic Party.

There, too, was Los Angeles City Councilman Martin Ludlow, who took over as political director after Nunez, and who Contreras first encouraged to run for office.

Also there were Mayor James K. Hahn, who received the backing of Contreras' federation, and his challenger, Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, a close personal friend who cut his political teeth in union organizing.

"We're all here because of Miguel," Nunez said. "He brought us to the dance. A lot of us owe a lot of our political success to him."

The assembled crowd was a living tribute to the political empire Contreras built in his years as a labor organizer and behind- the-scenes kingmaker.

And that role, most friends and observers say, will be nearly impossible to fill, particularly at a time when the national labor movement is weathering an internal crisis.

"I just don't know if anybody is going to fill that space," Nunez said. "That may be a void that may be hollow for years to come. I just don't know that someone is going to do that."

Contreras, 52, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, died of a heart attack Friday night.

"It couldn't have happened at a worse time," said Cedillo, noting that member unions, such as the Service Employees International Union, are threatening to leave the AFL-CIO.

"That's a very tense discussion in the labor movement," Cedillo said. "If there was a person who could keep the unions together, it was Miguel."

National labor writer Harold Meyerson, a friend of Contreras, said the union leader's death will have a deep effect statewide and nationally.