AFL-CIO Chief Strongly Hints at Gore Endorsement

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on Monday said a “perverted United States Congress” has enriched the upper classes at the expense of the poor and, though he did not mention Vice President Al Gore by name, strongly suggested the presidential candidate had secured the backing of the 13-million-member labor federation.

“We will endorse a candidate who shares our outrage, who shares our vision and our values and who will, above all, champion the concerns of working families,” Sweeney said in a keynote address opening the federation’s biennial convention in Los Angeles.

Sweeney repeatedly attacked the Republican-controlled Congress in his address to 1,000 union activists at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

“The House of Representative is controlled by an ugly, anti-poor, anti-working family majority,” Sweeney said.

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations would work not only to keep the White House in Democratic hands, he said, but to wrest control of Congress from the Republican Party.

“Outrage is right here in this hall,” he said. “It is pounding in the heart of every trade unionist in this country as our perverted United States Congress continues to boost those who are up and kick those who are down.”

He cited as one example a recent GOP balanced-budget plan that would have delayed a tax credit for the working poor. Congressional leaders backed away from the proposal after Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the GOP presidential front-runner, said, “I don’t think they ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor.”

Sweeney did not mention former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, Gore’s rival for the Democratic presidential nomination but seemed to allude to his strong labor record as well when he said, “It is fortunate we have two candidates from one of the parties who are right more on our issues than they were wrong.”

The question leading into the convention wasn’t whether Bradley would secure the federation’s endorsement--Bradley aides conceded that was unlikely--but whether the AFL-CIO would make its endorsement so early. The backing of Gore now would be the earliest union presidential endorsement since the federation tapped Democrat Walter F. Mondale in 1983.

The endorsement appeared sealed Monday when 15 unions followed the lead of the 1.4-million-member United Food and Commercial Workers, which voted unanimously Sunday to support Gore.

Last week, Gore won the endorsement of the National Education Assn., the nation’s largest teachers union with 2.5 million members, and the American Federation of Teachers.