Harkin’s Labor Stand Is Brave, Risky

No president or major presidential candidate in history has ever been so bluntly outspoken in support of labor than Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). But only now are most of America’s largest unions rallying solidly behind his faltering campaign.

A minority of unions that are either for other candidates or doubt Harkin’s electability have prevented him from winning the early endorsement he should have received from the 14-million-member AFL-CIO. It takes a two-thirds majority of the unions affiliated with the labor federation to make an endorsement.

In the past, other presidents and credible presidential candidates have been good friends of labor, including presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Vice President Walter Mondale. But only Harkin and the Rev. Jesse Jackson have been so openly and unequivocally pro-labor.

Harkin delighted delegates to the AFL-CIO convention in Detroit last November, and they roared their approval after he unabashedly told them: “When I’m President of the United States, every . . . scab-hiring, union-busting employer in America will know that working people in America have a friend in the White House--and that’s all there is to it!”

None of his opponents in the Democratic race come close to that kind of pro-labor position. It wasn’t one created for this campaign. He proved that by his voting record in the U.S. Senate on social, economic and labor issues.

Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) also has a good liberal voting record, but he rarely talks about unions. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton has the backing of unions representing many teachers and public employees, but after 12 years in office his credentials as a progressive, pro-worker candidate are, at best, suspect.

His state ranks near the bottom in wages, health and safety protections for workers and per capita income. It seeks to attract corporate investments by advertising its low wages and the fact that it has an anti-union “right to work” law that helps employers battle unions.

Jerry Brown generally had good relations with labor and liberals when he was governor, but that was long ago. Former Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), now a corporate lawyer for, among others, large insurance companies, doesn’t attack labor, but he talks mostly of his love for corporations.

Still, even Tsongas is better than the Republican candidates--President Bush and his only rival, Pat Buchanan, who are almost as openly anti-union as Harkin is sympathetic to them.

The clear majority of unions behind Harkin includes those that represent millions of auto workers and machinists, clothing workers and miners, steel workers and those in the electrical industry.

However, they may be moving too late because of the internal union squabble mostly over Harkin’s electability. If Harkin bombs in today’s primaries and caucuses, which come before his union supporters could mobilize their forces, he may even have to drop out of the race.

If he does fairly well on this crucial day--and he does have a slight chance--he should be able to get the campaign money he needs to carry him until other contests begin later this month in industrial states such as Michigan and Illinois, where labor has substantial political strength. Then they could help propel him to a possible victory at the Democratic convention.

The Iowa senator’s position on labor is bold but risky, both for Harkin and the unions that are backing him.

The problem for Harkin is that many political pundits delight in repeating the dubious contention of labor’s foes that unions are so out of favor in this country their endorsements amount to “kisses of death.”

Almost all Democratic candidates for office seek labor backing, including the current ones. These days, with employers laying off millions of workers and wages not even keeping up with inflation, union support may be increasingly valuable.

The idea that labor’s backing can be a “kiss of death” became particularly ludicrous in 1984 when Sen. Gary Hart ran for the Democratic nomination.

He ardently pleaded for labor’s endorsement. But when Mondale won it, Hart hurriedly changed course, joined those denouncing “special interest bosses” and suggested that Mondale’s acceptance of the endorsement Hart himself sought in vain somehow made Mondale a “captive” of labor.

The gambit didn’t work for Hart, and Reagan didn’t even try it in his campaign against Mondale.

A labor endorsement should be seen by voters as a sign that a candidate such as Harkin recognizes the need for a radical shift away from the “trickle-down” economic theory of Ronald Reagan and Bush that has vastly increased the wealth of the wealthy, hurt middle-income workers and made the poor even poorer.

While Harkin wants labor’s support, he is seeking broader public approval as a populist, just as Sen. Harris Wofford did in his recent upset election in Pennsylvania--where labor was The backbone of his campaign against the Republican, former U.S. Atty. Gen. Dick

If Harkin wins the Democratic nomination, labor will clearly get much--if not most--of the credit. If he only manages to come close, unions backing him can legitimately be given credit since he is now so far behind.

Still, while they are courageously supporting the candidate who supports the traditional liberal-labor agenda of the Democratic Party, some critics call them foolhardy.

These critics don’t see Harkin as a winner, which they desperately want. They don’t want a candidate holding up the liberal-labor banner if he is likely to drop out soon. Who, they ask, will pick it up if Harkin has soiled it by losing while carrying it on the political battlefield?

That isn’t the point. Someone should be the unequivocal liberal-labor candidate, and if Harkin, who is such a candidate, doesn’t get the nomination, there will be time to switch to one of the other Democratic candidates, any of whom will be better for working people than Bush or Buchanan.