Organized Labor

Organized labor on Monday formally started a $2-million campaign to put an initiative on the November, 1988, ballot to assure funding for the California worker safety program that Gov. George Deukmejian eliminated from the state budget. John Henning, veteran leader of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, announced plans for grass-roots union members and paid petition circulators to collect at least 800,000 signatures of voters by April 22.

Big Labor is back. With a tough-talking Irishman from the Bronx, John Sweeney, as its new president, the 13-million-member AFL-CIO has reemerged as a potentially powerful political force, winning new respect and even fear among its foes in Congress and the business world. Organized labor supplied the workers and cash that helped a Democrat win a close Senate race in Oregon earlier this year.

The political arm of Los Angeles' labor movement stunned many supporters of City Charter reform Monday by voting to oppose the effort just weeks after many of the group's leaders had touted its benefits for organized workers. The vote by the County Federation of Labor's Committee on Political Education represented the latest setback for charter reform advocates, who had lobbied hard for labor's support and believed that they had it. Mayor Richard Riordan and City Atty.

Tuesday will be labor day in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor's money and manpower may well decide who will occupy the three City Council seats to be filled in runoff elections this week. Pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of volunteers into two of the council races--on the Eastside and the northeast San Fernando Valley--may lock up victories for organized labor's favored candidates, Alex Padilla in the 7th District and Victor Griego in the 14th.

The sleeping giant of America's labor movement seems to be waking up. Numerous magazine and newspaper stories have commented on organized labor's "renewed political clout" a year after an insurgent movement ousted AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and replaced him with the militant ex-janitor organizer John Sweeney. The minimum wage increase has been signed into law, and in key congressional districts throughout the country, labor has been flexing its political muscle.

Emboldened by the Teamsters union's declared major victory in its 15-day strike against United Parcel Service of America, jubilant leaders of the U.S. labor movement vowed Tuesday to step up worker-organizing drives, political campaigns and lobbying efforts.

The North American Free Trade Agreement vote may be over, but the bloodshed isn't. President Bill Clinton's credibility has been saved, for the second time in six months, but when is he going to build it the old-fashioned way--by proposing legislation the American people want? The U.S. economy and standard of living is already in trouble, and now we have to enter into a game of three-dimensional, three-nation economic chess. Meanwhile, U.S.

If a majority of California voters next week support Proposition 226, dubbed by proponents the "Paycheck Protection Act," organized labor won't be the only constituency dealt a fatal blow. Environmentalists, senior citizens, advocates for children and the disabled, supporters of affordable housing, civil rights and women's rights groups and champions of public education also will find themselves much weaker politically. The reason is simple.

Robert B. Reich hardly fits the conventional mold of secretary of labor. Traditionally the post goes to someone who views the job as the Administration's liaison both to organized labor and management, and focuses largely on labor-related regulatory issues. But, if Reich attempts to put into practice the theories he has preached in his published work and as a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the post might be more properly named secretary of the workplace.