Labor Mounts Late-Hour Attack on China Trade Bill

California union leaders Art Pulaski and Miguel Contreras came to Capitol Hill for what may be remembered as labor’s last stand on China trade.

On the eve of today’s scheduled make-or-break vote in the House on granting China permanent normal trade relations, momentum was with the other side. Business lobbies were predicting victory. House leaders and the Clinton administration were trumpeting critical new endorsements.

Undaunted, the two Californians marched up to the second floor of the Rayburn House Office Building to plead for a no vote from one of the few representatives who remained undecided on the China trade bill, Democrat Julian C. Dixon of Los Angeles.

Their message at this late hour?

“It’s about jobs,” said Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation. “And it’s about justice and about freedom. We’re talking about core values here.”

Dixon was an opponent of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993. He is the sort of lawmaker that labor desperately needs on this vote. And yet he was holding out. “Some days I lean this way,” the 11-term congressman said, “and other days I lean the other way. . . . This is probably the toughest vote I can recall.” Dixon said that he doubted he would reveal his vote until he casts it.

Such was the struggle facing labor leaders as they sought, in meeting after meeting, phone call after phone call, to halt the flow of votes toward the China trade bill as the House opened debate on the measure Tuesday.

Labor leaders, going toe-to-toe with business lobbyists who also laid siege to the Capitol, acknowledged that they are the underdogs. But they insisted that they must take a stand against what they describe as a measure backed by “mammoth multinational corporations” prepared to export hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs to China.

And they warned members of Congress of the power that their rank and file still hold in an election year. “Remember us. Remember who we are and what we mean,” said R. Thomas Buffenbarger, president of the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, during a news conference outside the Capitol.

Buffenbarger repeated labor’s claim--disputed by President Clinton--that the trade bill would cost more than 800,000 U.S. jobs in the next decade.

John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, told reporters that he was talking repeatedly with undecided members of both parties--”all of them”--including conservative Republicans who rarely see eye-to-eye with labor. “We’re hopeful we’re going to convince them of the right way.”

More Democrats Shift to Bill’s Support

But a seemingly unstoppable tide of lawmakers was clearly headed toward what labor called the “wrong” way.

Among formerly undecided members who announced their support of the trade measure Tuesday were Reps. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.), Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), Solomon P. Ortiz (D-Texas), Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas), Ruben Hinojosa (D-Texas) and Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.).

Cox, an influential voice on U.S.-Sino policy, demanded--and won late Tuesday--language in the bill that details the scope of a proposed new federal commission monitoring human rights issues in China.

Even House Democratic Caucus Chairman Martin Frost (D-Texas) disclosed that he will vote for the trade bill. Frost is the highest-ranking Democrat to side with the administration on the China vote. Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and Minority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) both oppose the measure, along with about two-thirds of the 211 House Democrats.

“This puts us right up to the edge of victory,” said Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), who has been helping Clinton put together a fragile bipartisan majority for the bill.

House leaders, who opened floor debate on the measure late Tuesday, scheduled the vote for this afternoon--a sign of their confidence in the outcome--although aides said procedural hurdles conceivably could delay the vote.

An Associated Press survey found 205 members openly supporting the measure, well ahead of the 172 members in the opposition camp but still short of the 218-vote majority needed to clinch passage in the 435-member chamber.

The controversial legislation would end the congressional practice, followed for the last two decades, of reviewing China’s trade status every year.

Last year, Beijing agreed to reduce tariffs and give the United States other trade benefits in a deal meant to help China enter the World Trade Organization, which polices international trade rules. The Clinton administration contends that Congress must do away with the annual China trade review to ensure that U.S. businesses get maximum benefit from those developments.

Democrats Stymied by China Issue

While the trade bill is opposed by a sizable minority of Republicans--mainly critics who say that China abuses human rights and threatens U.S. national security--it is principally House Democrats who have been tied in knots over the issue. And that is because labor, adamantly opposed to the trade measure, remains one of the party’s core constituencies. Without strong support from labor, Vice President Al Gore’s bid for the presidency and Gephardt’s bid to become the next House speaker would be in jeopardy.

Feelings among labor leaders about the trade bill were running so high that the United Auto Workers issued a news release Tuesday saying that it would “explore alternatives” to major party presidential candidates--even though Gore last year won the endorsement of the AFL-CIO. UAW President Stephen P. Yokich, in the release, even talked up Green Party candidate Ralph Nader.

“It’s time to forget about party labels and instead focus on supporting candidates, such as Ralph Nader, who will take a stand based on what is right, not what big money dictates,” the UAW statement said. “Supporting those who support us is our political agenda, not just a slogan.”

Gephardt, who hopes to be able to heal the party’s wounds after the trade vote, said he was not surprised by the unions’ massive mobilization. “If labor doesn’t speak out for its heartfelt beliefs, it wouldn’t be doing what it ought to do,” he told reporters.

But Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), a key lawmaker who endorsed the trade bill last week, suggested that labor might be shooting itself in the foot by hurting the chances of Democrats to keep the White House and retake the House. “It’s very difficult for me to understand why at this time and this place the unions have decided to make this a litmus test.”

Sweeney and other labor leaders shied away from calling the vote a litmus test. But they said that local union members would have to make up their minds in the fall on how enthusiastically they would support lawmakers who vote for the trade bill.

Contreras, the executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, noted pointedly that labor played a key role in the March primary election in which state Sen. Hilda Solis defeated Rep. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park). Martinez was in the camp of China trade bill supporters. But Solis, who is considered a shoo-in to take his seat in the general election, will be a solid vote for labor.

“She said that herself--no question,” Contreras said.

Contreras and Pulaski portrayed themselves as average Joes up against big business. “We’re not from high-powered lobbyists and we’re not from a lame-duck administration,” Contreras said. “We’re from the people back home.” He added that Democrats who vote for the trade bill will have to answer to “a lot of disappointed people.”

After meeting Dixon, the two union leaders headed to a 2 p.m. date with Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills) and a 3 p.m. session with Rep. Grace F. Napolitano (D-Norwalk). Both are considered likely to vote against the trade bill, although vote counts listed them as officially undeclared. They hoped to meet today with another undecided, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles).

Business lobbyists were swarming Capitol Hill too.

Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told reporters: “We believe we’re seeing this come together, but we’ve learned from John Sweeney that you have to do the lobbying and you have to do it on the ground.”

Donohue’s organization, which bills itself as the world’s largest business federation, has stolen a page from organized labor in its prolonged campaign to win passage of the China trade bill.

Chamber, Business Alter Strategy

The chamber organized early and locally, Donohue said, focusing on 66 swing congressional districts. In each district it found companies large and small that trade with China, then made members of Congress and voters aware of the collective contributions those companies make to community prosperity, especially in terms of jobs.

In the final, hectic days before the vote, the chamber and other American business interests have abandoned their traditional strategy of trying to broker deals above the fray and instead find themselves fighting labor at the grass roots for every vote.

“We’re doing this retail,” said Donohue. “There are two dozen [genuinely undecided members], and we’ve got a person on every one of them who is going to make sure something untoward doesn’t happen.”

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Times staff writer Tyler Marshall contributed to this story.

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* GORE FACES SKEPTICS: Vice President Al Gore backed China trade before another skeptical labor group. A5