While, according to official government statistics, union density declined last year, there were a handful of states that actually saw an increase in membership. California placed at the top of this list.

Last year, 110,000 workers joined unions in the Golden State. More than two-thirds of them were Latino. And as the county with the greatest Latino population in the nation and the site of several vigorous unionization campaigns, Los Angeles accounts for a significant part of that growth.   

At least since the 1990s, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the hotel workers’ union, now UNITE HERE Local 11, have played prominent roles in helping to organize new members, especially Latino immigrants.

After heading the hotel workers union, Maria Elena Durazo was elected as the labor federation’s executive secretary-treasurer in 2006. According to a recent New York Times article, she now “presides over what is widely perceived as the most successful group of unions in the country.”

For Durazo, immigrants are key to that success.

“You look around at who has the most difficult jobs, at who is doing the work we rely on every day, and it is immigrants,” Durazo told the Times. “If we look at what we can do for them, what we can do together, we see that there can be very important rewards that will improve their lives. We cannot fix the prosperity of the rest of the country without improving the prosperity of immigrants.”

In addition to empowering workers like government employees, teachers, janitors and security guards, the labor federation’s 350 unions, with a collective membership that amounts to roughly 800,000 workers, have taken part in “huge” protests in Los Angeles and engaged in “extensive voter outreach operations across the city.” A recent rally, for example, centered around the potential sale of the Los Angeles Times to the conservative billionaire brothers Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch.

Read Immigrant Workers Give New Direction to Los Angeles Unions.