POLITICS : Labor’s at Work Organizing Its Own Party : Delegates from disaffected unions meet Thursday to establish it nationally.

Hardly anybody listened when a Republican emissary urged delegates at the national convention of the Service Employees International Union to vote for Sen. Bob Dole in the fall. The audience kept chattering and gossiping, pausing occasionally to hiss.

When a Democrat solicited support for Bill Clinton, she was interrupted by jeers and cries of “What about NAFTA?”

Then Robert Wages took his turn, calling for the creation of a Labor Party in the United States. Applause cascaded through the hotel ballroom.

“It’s not a class struggle,” he shouted. “It’s a class war!”

Wages is president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. For five years, he and like-minded union members have been laying groundwork for a national political party focused on the needs and rights of the working class.

About 1,200 delegates from around the country are planning to convene in Cleveland on Thursday to formally establish a Labor Party, adopt a platform and launch a national organizing drive.

Add Labor to the pro-environment Greens, the Ross Perot-backed Reform Party and the progressive New Party in seeking an electoral niche that organizers say the two major parties fail to fill. “Both [Republicans and Democrats] are more interested in Wall Street than in Main Street. The bosses have two parties,” said Lou Pardo, recording secretary of a machinists’ union local here and a member of the Labor organization.

“We’re the only industrial society in the world without a Labor Party,” Wages said in an interview. “We’re also the only industrialized society without [universal] health care, without a wide social safety net. I think there’s a connection.”

Since 1991, Labor Party advocates have stumped union locals and coffee shops, formed chapters from Los Angeles to New Jersey, solicited money and endorsements from various union headquarters and put research departments to work.

Now the Labor Party’s proponents are sharing national stages with, as Wages put it, “the Rs and the Ds.” He fields phone calls from the likes of Angela “Bay” Buchanan, whose brother Patrick J. Buchanan knows the power of an economic populist message.

“There’s a lot of interest,” said Edward Lynch, an Ohio SEIU officer. “It’s got a lot of merit. The Democrats have been leaving labor out in the cold. They think they’ve got us in their pocket.”

The union-based party is forming at the same time that a re-energized AFL-CIO is mounting a high-profile, $35-million campaign to influence the political agenda in 1996. The AFL-CIO has endorsed the Clinton-Gore ticket.

Within the AFL-CIO and among outside observers, there is agreement that the Labor Party could be a big help to the traditional umbrella group this year, mobilizing working people to get involved in the election and bringing rank-and-file concerns to the fore.

“As a tactic, it can make sense,” said writer Kevin Phillips, who explores issues of class in America. “They can say to the Democrats, ‘Look, there are people out there that would like to go off the reservation.’ ”

Alan Benjamin of the San Francisco-based chapter of the Labor Party Advocates, wrote in the Organizer, a monthly labor-oriented paper, that he would like to see local Labor candidates running by 1997 in a “break with the Democrats.”

But Wages is in the go-slow camp. He sees a need to grow first beyond the initial union base “or we will lose.”

Indeed, the unions at the core of the party movement--OCAW; the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union; the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees; the California Nurses Assn., and the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union--are not in the mainstream of organized labor.

“These are unions that have been traditionally . . . at the left end of the spectrum,” said Robert Zieger, a University of Florida labor historian.

Each of the five has endorsed the party from international headquarters and contributed seed money. Together the unions represent about 1 million workers.

At the local and district levels, their message has caught on with other unions. The party is supported by, among others, musicians in New York City; teachers in Madison, Wis.; glass workers in San Francisco; carpenters in Sacramento and Toledo; and letter carriers in Sioux City, Iowa, and High Point, N.C.

The vice president of the Labor Party’s Chicago chapter is Gerald Zero, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 705, which represents 15,000 truck drivers and has contributed $2,500 to the Labor Party effort, Zero said.

In 1992, he worked hard for Clinton. Since then, Zero has contracted a case of voter’s remorse. “I don’t feel we got our money’s worth,” he said. “I’m not totally against Bill Clinton. But if he had fought as hard for the striker replacement bill as he fought for NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], it might have passed.”

Tony Mazzochi, a Labor organizer, summed up the philosophy: “Everyone constitutionally should be guaranteed a job at minimum wage. Everyone should be guaranteed a roof over their head. Everyone should have health care. Everyone has to be free to organize unions if they wish. These aren’t privileges. These are rights. The world is not made for corporate convenience.”