ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 3, 1996 TAG: 9609040042
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: SHARON COHEN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE AFL-CIO'S NEW PRESIDENT jumps into the political ring swinging to change unions' labor pains into gains.
It's noon when John Sweeney slips into the crowded Catholic school hall near a crumbling housing project. He has come to hear the woes of America's workers.
One by one, some awkwardly, some angrily, they speak, as Sweeney sits in a folding chair and listens patiently and respectfully.
A Hispanic woman with suffering eyes, her boyish frame lost in an oversize sweatshirt, tells of life as a $4.54-an-hour home-care worker. ``I don't have a refrigerator or a stove,'' she said. ``I have no health insurance. I have no money for it. I try not to get sick.''
A factory worker is angry he has been locked out in a fight over wages with his plant's new Indonesian owner. ``They're trying to make us a third-class world,'' he fumes, ``and treat us like third-class citizens.''
A middle-aged mother, fighting back tears, said she lost her job after 22 years, missing retirement insurance by nine days. ``You go from middle class, past no class, down to no income at all,'' she said. ``You deplete your savings and say, `Where do I go from here?'''
That's the question John Sweeney has been chosen to answer for these workers and millions of others. And for himself.
As new president of the AFL-CIO, the federation of 78 unions and 13.1 million workers, Sweeney is revitalizing the nation's faltering labor movement, even as critics write its epitaph.
His bold - some say impossible - bid to bring unions back to the center of American life is being closely watched from Capitol Hill to corporate suites.
Chicago is one stop on a nationwide ``America Needs A Raise'' tour that has taken him from Seattle to Baltimore. At each stop he listens to the fears and fading dreams of blue-collar America.
In his pin-striped suit, Sweeney looks like a Wall Street banker. But when he speaks, it's in a voice echoing from decades in union halls and picket lines - sharp-edged, adversarial, and not afraid to push back.
``Workers,'' he declares, ``are scared to death!''
``Workers are running out of money, running out of options, running out of hope. They see the stock market soaring and profits soaring, and they wonder, `Who the hell is getting my share?''' |n n| A year ago, Sweeney defeated his mentor Thomas Donahue in the first contested leadership race in the AFL-CIO's 40-year history.
Although he was 61 years old and had been in the labor movement four decades, he promised to create a ``new voice'' for the working class.
His allies see no paradox.
``The key to being a new voice is not your longevity. It's the content,'' said Andy Levin. He is part of the team of young street-smart and Ivy League tacticians Sweeney ushered into the AFL-CIO headquarters, two blocks from the White House.
Their plan is to shake the house of labor out of decades of lethargy with a simple strategy: Don't mourn; organize.
That won't be easy.
Union membership, which peaked at 34.7 percent of the U.S. work force in 1954, was down to 14.9 percent in 1995. Global competition, plant closings and 1980s merger mania sent hundreds of thousands of American jobs down the tubes or south of the border.
With Sweeney in charge, the AFL-CIO upped dues - 15 cents a month for a year - to raise much of the $35 million it will spend on its '96 political action campaign. Money is pouring into congressional districts where labor's pollsters reckon hostile lawmakers might be unseated by a burst of television ads and get-out-the-vote muscle.
Republicans bellow it's an attempt to buy Congress for the Democrats by taxing workers.
Sweeney scoffs at such complaints.
``If you're going to have an active, effective labor movement, you have to be politically active and politically effective,''Sweeney said.said Sweeney, who details his credo in his book, ``America Needs a Raise: Fighting For Economic Security and Social Justice.''
Sweeney's track record at getting things done is good.
In his 15 years as president of the Service Employees International Union, membership nearly doubled to 1.1 million in an era of worker concessions and shrinking unions.
He scored about half his gains by annexing other unions. But the man who got his first union card tending graves at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in New York's Westchester Countyhe also signed up those long ignored - home health care workers, parking attendants and janitors.
``People said you can't organize low-income workers, there's too much turnaround, they don't speak our language,'' recalled Tom Balanoff, president of a Service Employees local in Chicago. ``He wasn't afraid to do that.''
Sweeney also is credited with increasing the role of women and minorities in his union. A gay and lesbian caucus started during his tenure.
``He understood that was the future of unions - they had to be inclusive, not old white male clubs,'' said Tom Woodruff, the Service Employees organizing director.
And Sweeney added another element to the mix: confrontation.
The union's Justice for Janitors campaign is the premier example. Protesters have handcuffed themselves to doors, staged hunger strikes, tapped into e-mail, led mock Christmas caroling (``The 12 days of injustice'') and blocked traffic from Rodeo Drive in California to bridges leading to the nation's capital.
``This portly white guy made Justice for Janitors possible,'' Levin said. ``If there's anybody who could take those innovative tactics, that direct action and spread it through the labor movement, I think it's John Sweeney.''
But is that what labor needs?
Some union leaders fear his brand of boat rocking - especially when it ties up commuters - will alienate the public. His opponent, Donahue, chided him for the Washington disruptions, saying he wanted to build, not block, bridges. Sweeney retorted it was sometimes necessary to do both.
It's a sharp contrast to his predecessor, Lane Kirkland, a Washington insider who left the organizing to local unions. and seemed more at home discussing foreign policy at seminars than jawboning janitors on picket lines.
``Kirkland played the consummate insider's game,'' said Harley Shaiken, a University of California-Berkeley professor and labor expert. ``Sweeney is playing an outsider's game. He's taking the labor movement back to the workplace, to the community - if necessary, back to the streets.''
The day after his election in October, Sweeney marched in New York's garment district to protest sweatshops.
``Every workplace in America is being turned into a sweatshop,'' he told a cheering crowd. ``Productivity is at an all-time high, and the greedy employers want more!''
Since then, Sweeney has picketed with aerospace workers in Washington, newspaper workers in Detroit, and health care workers in California.
And although the AFL-CIO has endorsed President Clinton and Sweeney was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, he was in San Diego to relay his message when the Republicans gathered: ``You wanted to make history? Well, you ARE history.''
The old labor cry was ``Which Side Are You On.'' Sweeney's answer is as glaring as his trademark red suspenders.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his conservative allies? ``Newtie and the Blowhards.''
Bob Dole? ``The Darth Vader of American politics.''
Pat Buchanan as a champion of workers? ``[It's] like saying the Ayatollah Khomenei speaks for priests and rabbis.''
In turn, the Republicans and some business groups have denounced Sweeney, churning out memos and broadsides, calling him a demagogue, ``Boss Sweeney,'' a darling of the radical left and of the communists.
Columnist George Will wrote Sweeney seems ``more like someone's Uncle Lenny than like Lenin'' but also said he substitutes a ``flair for blarney'' for a serious analysis of deregulation and the global economy.| |n n| The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which organized a campaign to counter AFL-CIO ads, claims Sweeney's red-meat rhetoric is both class warfare and fiscally irresponsible.
``Sweeney, in our view, wants to take the country backward,'' said Bruce Josten, a senior vice president, noting his threats of militancy and opposition to the balanced budget amendment.
But the name-calling also has raised labor's profile.
``He's made us relevant again,'' boasted Rich Trumka, the fiery former head of the United Mine Workers, who is AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer - and considered a likely Sweeney successor.
``There isn't a single morning TV show, radio show, that doesn't have something to say about organized labor,'' said the other member of the Sweeney troika, Linda Chavez-Thompson, AFL-CIO executive vice president. ``Before, we weren't even on the map.''
The past year has seen a flurry of ``labor's back'' stories, including a Newsweek article titled ``It's Hip to be Union,'' citing a magazine poll that found 62 percent of Americans approve of unions, compared with 55 percent in 1983.
But unions need more than public approval. Some estimate they must add 300,000 workers annually just to stay even. Even Sweeney supporters say that's daunting.
``He's trying to turn around an 18-wheeler in a room that only fits a small car,'' said Wade Rathke, who heads a Service Employees local in New Orleans.
Others say it's impossible.
``Losing about 7.5 million members since 1970 is an insurmountable task for the union movement to recapture,'' said Leo Troy, a Rutgers University professor writing a book on the decline of unions. ``If the workplace is so mean, why aren't there more workers joining unions?'' |n n| John Joseph Sweeney became a union man when the steel mills of Youngstown belched into the night skies and auto towns like Flint could set their clocks by the shrill blast of the plant whistle.
No one bought Japanese cars, worried about trade imbalances or used words like downsizing and outsourcing.
Sweeney's speeches echo that age when ``made in America'' was king and John F. Kennedy assured the nation that ``a rising tide lifts all boats.''
He grew up in the Bronx, the son of Irish immigrants, a bus driver and a maid. Friends say his mother's job cleaning other people's homes instilled in Sweeney a hunger to fight for low-wage workers.
Sweeney's passion for unions came from tagging along with his father to transit worker meetings.
``One of the first speeches I wrote for him, I said, `What mattered to you most growing up?,''' said Ray Abernathy, the Service Employees' publicist. ``He said, `In my home, church, family and the union. We always said without the church there was no redemption, without family there was no love, and without the union, there was no food on the table.'''
A Catholic father of two, the stocky man with the ruddy Irish face and crown of white hair is a born politician, with a memory for names and faces, traveling from city to city, never forgetting whose son is sick or whose daughter just got married, smiling through endless Instamatic shots.
His wife, Maureen, a former New York schoolteacher, met her husband of 34 years while ringing doorbells during his campaign for Democratic district leader in Yonkers.
Unlike many labor leaders, Sweeney didn't start on the shop floor. After college, he worked briefly for IBM, then took a pay cut to become a researcher at the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
Sweeney moved to the Service Employees, replacing his friend, Donahue. He eventually became head of a 70,000-member New York City local and, in 1980, took the helm of the union.
Friends say Sweeney is most comfortable as a gray eminence, a prime mover content to let others electrify the crowds at rallies.
``At times, people wanted John to be more flamboyant, more outspoken,'' said Andy Stern, Sweeney's successor as Service Employees president. ``He told me good things come to people who don't expect credit for them.''
Even though Sweeney criticizes the Republicans, he's far more discreet about discord within the labor family.
Although he argued labor had become irrelevant under Kirkland and suggested he step down, Sweeney insists his predecessor made a ``great contribution.'' As for Donahue, Kirkland's deputy, handpicked successor and interim AFL-CIO chief, Sweeney calls him an ``outstanding trade unionist.''
He's also reluctant to criticize Clinton, even though they disagreed on welfare reform and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
``He plays his cards close to his vest - that's what makes him a good negotiator,'' said Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and a Sweeney supporter.
Sweeney's tact serves him well as he straddles two worlds.
He reads The Wall Street Journal and usually travels first class, but addresses union members at rallies as ``brothers and sisters.''
He sips chardonnay over lunch - between bites of his Reuben sandwich.
He is at equally at home discussing the antics of wrestler Hulk Hogan (his son had been a fan) or the Irish peace talks with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
He has dined at the White House, but seems just as comfortable eating potluck off paper plates in a church basement.
But there is another trait he is known for - his temper.
When he was caught off guard by some aspects of a Justice for Janitors sit-in that blocked traffic in Washington, D.C., Sweeney tracked Stern down at an airport and sharply reminded him he was still Service Employees president.
`Angry,'' Stern said, ``would be a good word.'' |n n| John Sweeney calls himself a risk taker.
In his first year in office, he has gambled on several fronts: He has tried to woo young converts, lobbied for a minimum-wage increase and worked to rebuild labor's role as a power broker.
His initiative, Union Summer, an internship program modeled after the '60s Freedom Summer civil rights movement, placed 1,000 college-age students in 43 organizing campaigns.
But Sweeney knows the far bigger measure of his success will be the effect of his activism at the ballot box come November.
The AFL-CIO has targeted dozens of members of Congress - mostly Republican freshmen - with its barrage of radio and TV ads, ripping into their votes on Medicare, minimum wage and other pocketbook issues.
It has tapped 86 House districts as key battlegrounds and plans to deploy 131 organizers to them.
Gingrich called the campaign ``the most blatant, overt attempt to intimidate and buy Congress.'' Some outraged GOP House members claimed the ads are filled with lies, citing stations that have refused to air them.
In July, the GOP struck back with its own multimillion-dollar ad campaign. The chamber of commerce also organized its own group of business associations, The Coalition, to run counter-ads.
Sweeney, however, is undeterred.
``I think it's a sign that it's working,'' he said. ``Sometimes the truth hurts.''
And although Republicans claim 40 percent of union members supported the GOP in 1994, Sweeney doesn't expect they'll remain in the fold. ``They voted for change ... that would improve their lives,'' he said. ``Instead, they saw an attack on everything that they believe in.''
Sweeney is cautious not to make any electoral predictions or set a numerical goal on recruiting union members. He said he doesn't expect a huge growth overnight - but does hope to establish a new tone of organizing.
``The problems we are faced with just didn't occur,'' he said. ``They've been creeping up on us for a number of years, so it will take a number of years to turn it all around. ... Give us time. Then you judge.''
LENGTH: Long : 265 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has taken to theby CNBstreets using marches, labor shutdowns, and get-out-and-vote rallies
to strengthen unions' standing. color.