Post NAFTA, Don’t Discount Union Strength : Clinton may get labor’s endorsement in 1996, but that doesn’t mean he’ll have members’ enthusiasm or votes.

What you see in politics is often not what you get, so don’t be fooled by the declining number of union members when you’re trying to estimate the political strength of unions in the aftermath of the fight over the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Unions today represent a far smaller percentage of the private-sector work force than in the past--just 11% compared with more than 35% in the 1950s. Ergo, it has been widely but wrongly presumed that labor’s political strength has also dropped precipitously.

But it was primarily the political strength of unions, with their massive campaign against it in every town and city in America, that almost brought down NAFTA. It passed with only 16 votes to spare, despite the powerful, mostly conservative forces pushing for its adoption.

True, unions don’t have the political clout they had when men like President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a good majority of Congress unabashedly fought for them. But unions were principal players in the election of the present members of the House and Senate who are generally sympathetic to labor--and they make up a slim majority in Congress.

Unions also significantly helped in electing President Clinton, labor’s sometime friend who inexplicably damned the unions’ perfectly proper effort to defeat NAFTA. He said unions used “roughshod, muscle-bound tactics” and “naked pressures” to defeat the measure.

Unions are right to oppose Congress members who fight their goals. Everybody else does, including Clinton. The President made side deals worth millions and used all the enormous power of the presidency to support NAFTA.

The political fight over NAFTA is a good measure of labor’s political strength, because it did almost defeat what should have been a lead-pipe cinch to pass.

Suggested by former President Reagan and negotiated by the Bush Adminstration, NAFTA was backed by influential power blocs: wealthy financial interests, investment speculators, giant corporations, most of the media and a majority of Republicans, including reactionary Newt Gingrich, the House minority whip from Georgia. And the proponents were helped with a $50-million slush fund put up by rich Mexicans and that country’s chief political party, which has controlled Mexico almost as a dictatorship for 60 years.

A majority of Democrats opposed NAFTA, and, sure, labor was not alone in fighting it. Several environmental groups opposed NAFTA, but they were badly divided. A few other narrowly focused special-interest organizations fought it, as did some public-interest groups like those headed by Ralph Nader. Also against it was the noisy, laugh-a-minute, sound-bite Ross Perot and a few other oddballs. But labor was the true force that nearly defeated NAFTA.

It is hard to understand Clinton’s determination to wage an ugly battle for NAFTA against unions that he needs so urgently to win a health-care program and reach his other goals. While NAFTA means immediate job loss for labor, on the plus side--according to the Congressional Budget Office--it will boost this country’s gross domestic product by just a third of 1%, and then only after 10 years.

The NAFTA fight itself is finished for the time being, but its impact will linger. Hot tempers will cool, and if Clinton does a few more constructive things for workers, unions and their liberal allies, he will get their endorsement--if he runs for reelection.

But he won’t fight hard for much-needed labor-law reforms. And in view of Clinton’s calculated denunciation of labor’s fight against NAFTA, it will be hard for union leaders to generate the necessary enthusiasm among union members and local and regional leaders he will need to win the 1996 election.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), who is usually on labor’s side, will not lose much union support for his pro-NAFTA vote, since he made no promises to fight it. But other liberals, like Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-Pico Rivera), are going to be in trouble for giving in to Clinton’s hard-sell tactics. Torres and some others who pledged to fight NAFTA deserted after getting promises of some “chump change” from Clinton to help workers who lose their jobs to Mexico.

Clinton’s battle for what was essentially a pro-business, Republican agreement will not easily be forgotten by unions that proved they still have substantial political influence on the world of politics.