Labor Candidates Agree On Enemy Despite Leadership Fight, Afl-Cio Focuses Anger On Gop

With a call for unity to confront the Republican Congress, AFL-CIO President Thomas Donahue opened the annual convention that will choose between him and a challenger who claims to have enough support to take over.

Donahue’s address Monday generally steered clear of the issues that divide him and John Sweeney, who has been pledged support from groups representing 55 percent of the votes to be cast by federation delegates on Wednesday.

“It’s true that we come here today divided on the issue of who will lead us over the next two years,” Donahue told more than 1,000 delegates. “But on Thursday, let there be no question that when we leave this hall to carry on our work, we must do so with our divisions healed, our strength enhanced and our federation more united than ever before.”

President Clinton told the delegates he supported increasing the minimum wage and he called for a tax deduction for anyone paying for higher education. He opposed GOP plans to cut the budgets of federal agencies which enforce labor regulations and student loan programs, and he threatened to veto proposals to cut Medicare.

“It is time we learned a fundamental lesson,” Clinton said. “Treating working people in a decent, fair, humane, enlightened way gives you a stronger American economy, not a weaker one.”

In a morning press conference, Sweeney said he would work to heal any divisions caused by his candidacy, but insisted “we’re very serious about our program for change.”

Much of Donahue’s 25-minute speech focused on Republican plans to curtail the enforcement of labor laws and proposals to abolish the minimum wage, reduce college loan programs and trim a tax credit for the working poor.

Donahue called the House passage of Medicare restraints at the same time it wants to relax taxes for some an “obscene spectacle.”

The Democrats did not escape his criticism either. Donahue recalled labor’s differences with President Clinton over the North American Free Trade Act.

“The fact is NAFTA has been a disaster, NAFTA is a job-destroyer,” he said.

He made only veiled references to the first contested election in the federation’s 40-year history, suggesting that the rhetoric of his opponents was harmful to the federation.

“This movement cannot move forward as long as the AFL-CIO is viewed by some as the reason for every problem that afflicts the labor movement and, at the same time, as the solution for every problem,” Donahue said.

Despite Donahue’s call for solidarity, tensions were said to be running high among union leaders who were divided over the officers’ election.

The presidents of the 15 unions which comprise the federation’s building trades department met Monday morning, with some under growing pressure to switch their allegiance from Sweeney to Donahue.

But Frank Hanley, a staunch Sweeney supporter and president of the Operating Engineers, said “all the building trades unions are sticking the way they were.”