Steely Steelworkers Union Sets Stage For Attempt To Reassert Labor’s Influence

Steelworkers at an annual conference mapped strategy to regain influence in Congress this week and disputed the notion that organized labor is all but dead.

About 700 delegates gathered to shape legislative strategies to counter Republican policies they consider anti-labor. They staged protests around the capital and welcomed a challenger to the current AFL-CIO leadership.

“Labor has been written off as an entity, but there’s something dramatic occurring here,” said Gary Hubbard, spokesman for the 700,000-member United Steelworkers of America.

The Steelworkers have been a visible presence in the Inland Northwest for years, representing many of the workers at Kaiser Aluminum’s Spokane County plants and in North Idaho mines.

Far from sounding its death knell, the Republican control of Capitol Hill and the power struggle under way at the AFL-CIO have reinvigorated organized labor, according to many labor officials.

“This is really good for the labor movement,” Hubbard said. “It makes us very visible in terms of what we need to do.”

The Steelworkers gave more than $5 million to federal campaigns between 1992 and 1994, but Hubbard said they will limit donations to Democratic campaign committees and party organizations in the future.

Instead, the union will give directly to chosen candidates.

“This isn’t dumping the Democratic Party; we’re making the party come to us,” Hubbard said.

Steelworkers President George Becker publicly threw the union’s support behind John J. Sweeney for the presidency of the AFL-CIO. Sweeney is challenging the federation’s current secretarytreasurer, Thomas R. Donahue.

“We can’t be strong and we can’t be progressive unless we have a strong labor movement in America,” Becker said.

He said workers want to know “somebody gives a damn about what happens to them; that somebody is going to fight for them.”