Unions Head to Chicago

August 26, 1996

THE DAILY FED

Unions Head to Chicago

The era of big government may be over, as President Clinton declared in his State of the Union address earlier this year--but you would not necessarily know it to look at the makeup of the delegates to this week's Democratic National Convention. In fact, more than 15 per cent of them represent public employees at the federal, state and local levels.

And many of those delegates insist there is no inherent contradiction between presidential rhetoric and their presence in Chicago. Public workers have "never stood in the way of leaner and better government," said Tom Fahey, a spokesman for the American Postal Workers Union.

But for others, the presence of so many public employee delegates creates a very real conflict. "Their representation at the Democratic convention speaks for itself," said Leo Troy, a professor of economics at Rutgers University who is a critic of unions' political involvement. Added Troy, "They will have very big input into the policies of what the Democratic President would be in education and will advance the idea of more government spending."

Most of the public workers are here under the auspices of the unions that represent them. Far and away the largest single group are teachers: Roughly 420 delegates come from the two teachers' unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The next largest contingent is made up of members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which counts about 167 voting delegates.

In addition, thanks to 1993 legislation relaxing the Hatch Act--the law barring political activity by federal workers-- postal workers' unions are sending at least 27 delegates to this year's Democratic gathering. And the two unions representing employees of federal agencies add another 17--including one employee of the beleaguered Internal Revenue Service.

Unions representing firefighters--doubtless a more sympathetic face of the public bureaucracy to the rank-and-file voter--are sending 20 delegates.

And these numbers do not even include the delegates from unions with a sizable minority of public workers. For example, half the members of the Service Employees International Union, which has 82 delegates, are public employees--as is the single largest local of the United Auto Workers.

Indeed, the labor movement in this country is increasingly concentrated in the public sector, which at present constitutes 42 per cent of total union membership, according to government figures.

Public sector unions are the most activist: AFSCME president Gerald W. McEntee is the originator of the AFL-CIO's idea of putting $35 million into a political "education" campaign to try to weaken or overturn the Republican majority in the Congress.

While public employees' unions have long identified with the Democratic Party, the increasingly sharp rhetoric directed at them from Republicans--teachers and IRS employees are particular targets of late--has increased their ardor for Democrats, along with their interest in making sure the feeling is mutual. The shutdown of the federal government during the standoff between Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress over the federal budget "was a real wake-up call for federal employees," said Robert M. Tobias, president of the 155,000-member National Treasury Employees Union. His group represents workers at 18 federal agencies.

Tobias said he plans to focus on Members of Congress at the convention receptions as a means of talking up his members' interests. More important, his and other public employees' unions are gearing up for unprecedented get-out-the-vote and volunteer efforts in the forthcoming congressional campaign.

Continued support from the Democrats is not something public workers feel they can take for granted--as the deliberations over the party's centrist platform made clear. "There was some language in there we thought was too tough on government services," said McEntee. "We wanted language that said the people who did the work were good people. They're only doing their jobs."

AFSCME has also worked overtime against welfare reform and is now seeking to mitigate its impact. A major concern is ensuring that unpaid welfare recipients do not supplant public employees. And teacher unions, also in Republican crosshairs, successfully softened Democratic platform language about education reform.

Still, the Administration has sent some signals of late that have reassured the public employee unions: Vice President Albert Gore Jr. showed up at a recent convention of the AFT to let its members know they had a friend in the Administration, and Hillary Rodham Clinton--in a satellite appearance before the convention of the American Postal Workers Union last week--emphatically opposed privatization of the U.S. Postal Service.