All that came into play in May 2005, when the SEIU worked with the local activist group Jobs With Justice and student organizations to hold a hip-hop open-mike night in a city club designed to attract young African American guards like Robinson.

 

But by August 2006, the SEIU had pulled out. "No one returned a phone call," said Robinson, the security guard.

 

SEIU's move shocked local labor activists. It seemed almost counter to the DNA of union organizing. If a union has eager and committed workers, outside support, and dialogue with the company, why quit?

 

"It felt like they pulled the rug out from under us," said union carpenter John Prisk, a Temple engineering major and campaign activist.

 

Unions have "represented our guards forever," said AlliedBarton chairman and chief executive officer Bill Whitmore, citing collective-bargaining agreements in several cities. He said SEIU's drive never gained traction here.

 

As the local AlliedBarton deal played out, Jobs With Justice coordinator Fabricio Rodriguez struggled to come to terms with what happened.

 

"At first I thought it was pragmatic - a union making sacrifices for a bigger thing that's going on," said Rodriguez, who had worked on the SEIU-led campaign and is now mobilizing community and student pressure to win gains in wages and working conditions for the guards.

 

"But our worker-leaders faced consequences that were more than our little community group could handle. Activists got moved off contracts, got their hours cut, and the company found ways to get them fired" - allegations the company denied.

 

"Now it's harder to cut that math," Rodriguez said. "I just don't see how fair it was."

 

The SEIU withdrawal in Philadelphia is the kind of story likely to come up next month at the SEIU's convention in Puerto Rico - bad publicity at a time when the union and Stern are poised to be major players in the forthcoming presidential election.

 

"I don't think any union leader should have the authority to limit the workers to cut that kind of deal," said Sal Rosselli, an outspoken critic who runs a large SEIU affiliate, United Health Care Workers West, in California.

 

"It's wrong," he said.

 

In 2005, Aramark entered into a neutrality agreement with SEIU and UniteHere, another union, Aramark spokeswoman Kristine Grow said.

 

Aramark, which provides food service at colleges, ballparks, companies and schools, would remain neutral in union-organizing drives, if their clients agreed.

 

In 2006, Aramark decided to terminate the neutrality agreement, which expired last summer. Since then, SEIU has applied hard pressure to the company. An SEIU Web site, www. aramarkstrikesout.info, solicits complaints about ballpark food.

 

"We fully respect and recognize our employees' right to choose a union," Aramark's Grow said. But the SEIU's current campaign "has nothing to do with the quality of our services or our workplace practices. It's all about getting the company to agree to their demands."

 

Meanwhile, as summer tourists throng to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, Wackenhut security guard Charlie Wilson hopes SEIU's drive will succeed.

 

The Florida company said 25 percent of its guards were union members.

 

"We have no sick days," Wilson complained, and the money the company gives him for health benefits does not cover the cost of the insurance he must pay as a diabetic.

 

"SEIU won't be bullied around by Wackenhut," Wilson said. "They are a strong union. They have our backs if anything does happen."