AFL-CIO to Finance Health Reform Drive : Legislation: Kirkland puts aside trade dispute, says ‘no lock on our purse strings.’ Campaign for Clinton package starts on radio, TV this month.

Putting aside its bitter dispute with the Clinton Administration over trade policy, organized labor will do “whatever it takes” to fight for enactment of the President’s controversial health care reform legislation, AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland said Tuesday.

“There is no lock on our purse strings,” he declared during a meeting with health care reporters. “We intend to be key, aggressive and active players.”

Specifically, Kirkland said, the AFL-CIO has begun designing a multimillion-dollar, nationwide radio and television advertising campaign starting this month. It is also conducting intensive grass-roots training sessions for union activists that will, among other things, seek to mobilize public opinion in key congressional districts.

“We will do everything that we can to develop the broad base of support that is required to get this measure through Congress,” Kirkland said. “I know of no issue that is more important right now to the future of this country.”

Kirkland’s announcement elated the Clinton White House, whose massive reform agenda has been virtually picked apart, element by element, by an array of interest groups since its introduction last fall. Labor’s backing could give the plan a much-needed boost.

The President’s prescription for reform actually is not the labor movement’s top choice among the plethora of competing proposals. As Kirkland conceded, unionists prefer the single-payer plan modeled after the Canadian system, in which the federal government collects taxes to pay for national health insurance.

However, acknowledging the widely held view that Congress would not enact such a proposal, Kirkland said: “The objective is the important thing . . . (and) the means of getting there must be governed by the political and legislative realities.”

Labor’s interest in the reform plan can be explained at least in part by the fact that, although union members have relatively generous health insurance plans, employers are increasingly seeking to “take back” benefits because of the rising cost of health care. As a result, the vast majority of labor disputes in recent years have involved health care coverage.

The White House hailed Kirkland’s announcement as “another step in building the coalition that will bring health security to the American people this year.”

Spokesman Robert O. Boorstin added: “It’s particularly important because it shows that people with very good insurance plans understand that those benefits are in some cases disappearing and in all cases can be taken away.”

Labor’s backing comes as Clinton’s agenda is under increasing criticism--not only from influential Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) but also from some key Democrats, including New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, chairman of the Finance Committee. Moynihan declared last weekend: “We don’t have a health care crisis in this country.”

From the Administration’s point of view, the timing of labor’s announcement was propitious, coming as the President prepares to reinvigorate the health care debate after a year of fits and starts.

White House aides said that Clinton intends to devote a significant part of his Jan. 25 State of the Union Address to health care.

The President has made several high-profile speeches on the topic, including one in late September to a joint session of Congress, only to become so distracted by other pressing issues that health care reform virtually faded from view. At the same time, recent public opinion polls have shown that support for reform has dropped noticeably.

Both the President and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who led the effort to draft the Administration’s reform agenda, have pledged to work for enactment before the end of the year.

Kirkland said that the AFL-CIO will actively oppose all the other health care proposals, with the exception of the single-payer plan--the only other proposal that he said offers the principles of universal coverage, a guaranteed set of benefits, equitable financing, quality assurance and cost controls.

Organized labor poured several million dollars into an ultimately losing fight against the North American Free Trade Agreement. Referring to that acrimonious debate, which severely frayed relations between the labor movement and the Clinton Administration, Kirkland said:

“We are going to commit ourselves and our resources to the pursuit of this legislation with the same vigor and the same commitment as we brought to the NAFTA struggle.”