Some labor leaders like Bob Wages, head of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, are no longer willing to play down their differences with the Clinton Administration. Absent an honest debate over the future of American workers, Wages is pushing the AFL-CIO to demand an economic summit with the president. PNS associate editor David Bacon writes on labor and immigration.

DENVER -- A growing number of voices in the labor movement are warning President Clinton and the Democratic Party that abandoning the economic interests of working-class voters is creating a dangerous political vacuum.

Pat Buchanan is surging ahead in Republican polls by using the anger of the economically insecure and targeting corporations that are slashing jobs. Now Bob Wages, president of the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, is calling for a summit between labor and the president to hammer out an alternative economic program. "If we can't get an economic summit with him, we should tell everyone where we stand in regard to his agenda," he said in an interview here.

According to Wages, the administration is in denial over the tremendous loss of jobs, and the erosion of wages, caused by free market economics. "Bill Clinton and the 'new Democrats' are internationalists," Wages asserts. "They believe in global capital's ability to move, to free up markets, to produce goods and services and bring them back into the United States. They say that creates healthy competition."

At a press conference during the New York AFL-CIO convention, Labor Secretary Robert Reich was asked to comment on figures compiled by his own department, which certified the loss of over 35,000 jobs as a result of NAFTA. Most observers believe the real job loss figure is several times this amount. Reich, however, says the agreement created 140,000 jobs in 1994 alone.

"The man's delusional," Wages laughs. "There can be no honest argument by this administration or by Secretary Reich that NAFTA has been good for this country ... Bill Clinton can't expect American workers to understand an economic policy which puts their jobs at risk for trade advantages in foreign countries. Not when he's unwilling to take on corporate welfare, even as defined by his own administration."

Until now, AFL-CIO leaders have taken pains to avoid any open confrontation with the Clinton administration despite issues which have bitterly divided them for three years. NAFTA, for example, was hardly mentioned at the AFL-CIO convention last fall and had no place on the official program. Nor was there any denunciation of the failure to win national health care. Weak administration support for the bill banning striker replacement was covered over by praise for Clinton's executive order banning the practice for federal contractors. (The order was subsequently overturned in federal court). The Republicans were blamed for the Team Act, a proposal to weaken legal prohibitions on company unions. But the proposal had its origin in the Dunlop Commission, created by Reich's own Labor Department.

Meanwhile, almost every important union has been hit hard by the current wave of corporate job cuts in the midst of surging profits. Bob Wages' own union, OCAW, represents about 100,000 workers, mostly at oil refineries belonging to some of the world's largest corporations. Last year Exxon made $30.9 billion in profit, while cutting 18,000 jobs in the last five years, 17 percent of its workforce. Chevron made $10.2 billion, and eliminated 9,000 jobs. Mobil made $10.8 billion, and reduced its payroll by 8,800. OCAW just concluded contract negotiations with big oil in a political atmosphere that treats corporate profits as untouchable, and jobs as expendable.

Instead of helping workers deal with this problem, Wages and his allies see the president moving the Democratic party to the right, competing with Republicans for swing voters in an ever smaller electorate. Clinton's ex-Republican strategist Dick Morris has announced that the reelection campaign is targeting suburban voters earning between $50,000 and $100,000 per year.

Absent any honest debate about their future by the president, it's not surprising that workers "start gravitating to the issues of the Republican Right," Wages says.

Frustration has reached the point where the AFL-CIO wound up postponing its planned early endorsement of Clinton last month. "The test isn't whether or not unions are going to endorse Bill Clinton, but whether unions can put millions of people on the street working for him, and get them to the polls," Wages declares. "Right now, we can't deliver people on the economic policies this administration represents."

Wages wants the AFL-CIO to draw up its own program on issues like jobs, tax policy, campaign financing and health care and demand an economic summit with the president. Meanwhile his union is one of the few that have endorsed Labor Party Advocates -- the effort to explore establishing a labor party. A founding convention is set for June in Cleveland. Wages sees it as a vehicle through which rank-and-file union members can participate in framing the economic agenda he advocates, and build up pressure for it from below.

Wages admits his perspective puts him at one end of the spectrum of political opinion within the AFL-CIO, but he believes that privately, most union leaders agree with him. "I sit in meetings and articulate these things, and people nod their heads," he says. "The question is, how do you move from agreement to action in response to it."