Clinton Tells Union He’d Cut Back on Federal Jobs : Campaign: The Democrat seeks to show his independence before a special-interest audience.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton told a group of state and local government employees that, if elected, he would “never bash government workers” but would challenge them to work more efficiently, “not as your enemy, but as your partner.”

The Arkansas governor, in a speech Wednesday to nearly 5,000 delegates to the biennial convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, proposed trimming the federal bureaucracy by about 100,000 jobs each year of his Administration.

“I believe in a lean government,” Clinton said, “but I believe in rewarding employees. I do not want to have layoffs. I do not want to let people go. I want to have more flexibility in the federal government.”

He said that most of the proposed job reductions would come through attrition, and he would seek to retrain workers within the government. He promised to “give dignity to people to have employment, and not a particular job.” His remarks drew loud and sustained applause.

Clinton also bashed the Bush Administration in new, pithy terms one day before a scheduled meeting with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin in Washington.

Campaign officials characterized the speech as one of a series that challenges the stereotype of a Democratic presidential candidate pandering to special-interest groups--this one by raising the sensitive issue of job reductions in front of an influential labor organization. Last Saturday, for example, Clinton criticized rapper Sister Souljah before a meeting of the Rainbow Coalition. He accused her of reverse racism in remarks that angered the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

If Clinton meant to antagonize the union members, he failed to do so. The reaction of Rich Gonzalez, president of Local 901, representing employees of the Los Angeles City Recreation and Parks Department, was typical. “He said all the right things and they were the things we wanted to hear,” Gonzalez said. “He put a lot of things in a small (speech) and I liked it all.”

In fact, Clinton’s comments about trimming the federal work force were unlikely to worry a union of state and local government employees. The labor group, with 1.3 million members in more than 3,000 locals nationwide, endorsed Clinton early in the primary process.

And Clinton made a point of saying that he, too, belongs. “I am proud to be a member of this union,” he said. “I’m a dues-paying member.”

Campaign spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers said Clinton was not going out of his way to pick fights with such traditional Democratic allies.

“He didn’t come here to drop a bombshell,” she said, adding that he intended to urge all government workers to consider how to work more efficiently. “It’s not an in-your-face kind of challenge, but we have to look at the way (public employees) do business.”

Clinton appears to be picking his words and fights carefully as he develops a campaign strategy to distinguish his drive for the White House from recent Democratic failures. In previous elections, the Democratic nominees--Walter F. Mondale in 1984 and Michael S. Dukakis in 1988--lost votes because they seemed unable to stand up to organized labor, minority groups and other special interests, both Clinton aides and outside observers have said.

Early this month, Clinton challenged the American Assn. of Retired Persons to pay for a greater portion of their benefits to help younger generations. Last Saturday, he condemned black racism at the Rainbow Coalition meeting. On Monday, he called for more cooperation between labor and management in a speech to a United Auto Workers meeting in San Diego.

In his address Wednesday, Clinton also attacked the Bush Administration and plugged his campaign programs, including a nationwide system of medical care, education reforms and cuts in military spending.

Clinton chided President Bush for refusing to support a gun-control bill: “Tough-on-crime has turned into wimp out in the face of other pressures.”

And, referring to Vice President Dan Quayle’s recent crusade against the “cultural elite,” Clinton said: “Who is he to call me part of an elite?” The governor compared Quayle’s wealthy background to his own. Clinton said he once lived in a house without indoor plumbing.

“This Administration’s idea of family values is to lecture the rest of us on how to behave. If only ‘Murphy Brown’ were taken off television, what a wonderful world this would be,” he said sarcastically.

And, referring to the union convention’s location in the gambling capital and what he considers the dire condition of the nation under Bush, Clinton told the delegates: “Don’t ever gamble more than you could lose, like we did in America. We gambled on the rich to provide for the poor. . . . A cruel bargain was made with most of us in this room.”

The audience, whipped into a supportive frenzy by Gerald W. McEntee, the union’s international president, interrupted the 45-minute address with repeated applause and several standing ovations.

McEntee, an early supporter of Clinton, likened the candidate to the Terminator, the movie cyborg that seemed indestructible.

“We need a voice and we need a champion,” McEntee thundered as he pounded the podium. Clinton’s critics “hit him with two-by-fours from one end of the country to the other. . . . He’s like the Terminator, he just comes back and comes back.”