Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, November 9, 1993                   TAG: 9311090029
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

UNIONS APPLYING PRESSURE

Others, however, are quietly continuing to donate money to members of Congress who back the pact, seeing NAFTA as just one of many issues to consider in choosing candidates to back in next year's congressional elections.

The agreement would eliminate trade barriers among the United States, Mexico and Canada and create the world's largest free trade zone. The unions contend it also would siphon off American jobs.

Growing tensions between the unions and the White House over NAFTA were highlighted when President Clinton, who accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from labor groups as a candidate, accused unions of "roughshod, muscle-bound tactics" in lobbying Congress against the agreement.

"A strong-arm tactic?" responded Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO. "What kind of pussy cats are there in the Congress?"

Kirkland said when Clinton asked for union help in lobbying for his health care program, "I do not recall any suggestion of our practices of strong-arm tactics or roughshod tactics in that regard."

Ron Carey, president of the Teamsters Union, said Clinton's comments, made Sunday during a television appearance, were "an insult to every working man and woman in America" and called for an apology.

Clinton was talking about what analysts say is one of the most intense lobbying efforts ever. Unions are spending $2 million on television, radio and newspaper advertising, billboards and bus signs to sway public support against the agreement.

Their lobbyists are tramping the Capitol corridors and their members are writing letters and making phone calls.

Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen said of labor's lobbying effort: "I think they're totally sincere about their concern that jobs are going to go south or to Asia or whatever, but I think they're totally wrong insofar as NAFTA."

Analysts said Clinton was showing his level of desperation by attacking the unions and unions were taking a risk by so openly opposing a Democratic president.

Clinton is "in sort of a crosscutting situation where suddenly all of his enemies are friends and all of his friends are enemies. It must be very frustrating for him," said Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution.

Harry Wilson, a political science professor at Roanoke College in Salem, said if the unions "win this but in the process greatly weaken a Democratic president, I'm not sure it's in their best interest."

But Hess said he didn't foresee long-term strains between labor and Clinton or between the unions and the congressional Democrats who back the agreement.

"They know all about the trade union lobbyists. They're not known for being silken or subtle," he said.

Meanwhile, some unions are quietly donating money to congressional Democrats supporting NAFTA but still considered friends of organized labor.

Rep. Vic Fazio, D-Calif., for instance, has received about $50,000 from groups such as the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers and unions representing carpenters and transportation workers.

"He always has been a supporter of labor issues, but it happens in this one case that they're on opposite sides," said a Fazio staff member, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.