Downtown's largest office building owner and community leaders last week announced an agreement to allow security guards to form a union. The move, the first unionization of private security guards in Los Angeles, will affect about 300 workers.

It could lead to a change in how security officers in Downtown high-rises are trained. It also could be the beginning of a larger Downtown high-rise unionization effort, said officials.

Last Wednesday Robert Maguire III, whose Maguire Properties holdings include six Downtown Los Angeles buildings (the 777, Wells Fargo, Gas Company, KPMG and U.S. Bank towers, and One California Plaza), joined Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and officials from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to announce the deal. The new union will have the option of joining an SEIU chapter.

The agreement also proposed a security guard training program jointly funded by Maguire Properties and SEIU, which may help meet the tentative provisions of

L.A. Safe & Secure, a City Council measure introduced last year to create regional security guard training standards. "I have always been committed to paying fair wages and full health benefits," Maguire said in a statement. "Otherwise, we cannot expect our building staff to provide the services we need. We expect this agreement to be precedent-setting."

The dedicated local chapter was a concession from the SEIU, which had wanted security guards to join a chapter already representing janitors working in commercial office buildings. The issue was a major stumbling block during months of negotiations with Maguire Properties, said SEIU spokeswoman Gina Bowers.

Peggy Moretti, a Maguire Properties spokeswoman, said Maguire was concerned that with just a single union, guards could walk out during a strike by janitors.

Los Angeles is the last major U.S. city without unionized security guards, Bowers said. Annual job turnover rates among Los Angeles security guards - more than 60% of whom are African-American, according to the SEIU -may be as high as 300%, said Downtown Councilwoman Jan Perry.

Downtown officials hope the agreement will improve employee retention.

"This allows our workers to improve their skills, their marketability, and ultimately empower them on the job," Perry said in a statement. "Worker retention and quality of life are important to this industry."

The agreement emerged in conjunction with renewed moves to increase security citywide. Last June, Perry authored the L.A. Safe & Secure plan, which received City Council approval. The program aims to reduce job turnover among security guards, create regional training standards and coordinate communications between guards and the city's emergency response teams.

Last week, the City Council unanimously endorsed the city's new $2.5 million Homeland Security and Disaster Preparedness Plan. The plan will provide staff and resources to the LAPD's counterterrorism bureau, offer additional personnel to the new Joint Regional Intelligence Center, expand bomb squad capacity, create a task force to detect terrorist activity around vital targets and form new disaster response teams within the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The agreement with Maguire could pave the way for unionization by security guards working in other Downtown office buildings, Bowers said.