WASHINGTON — Tony Mazzocchi, the driving force behind the nation's fledgling Labor Party, shocked thousands of the party's members when he recently wrote to them, "I am both afflicted with an incurable disease and blessed with an incurable optimism."

Mr. Mazzocchi, 76, has pancreatic cancer, and although his doctors give him only a few weeks or maybe a few months to live, he continues to battle relentlessly in pursuit of his dream — building a Labor Party that will someday move to center stage in American politics.

Tony Mazzocchi, who founded the national Labor Party in 1996, at his home on Friday in Washington. Mr. Mazzocchi has pancreatic cancer. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)

Gaunt from losing 25 pounds this year, he seems especially rueful that his health is failing at what he sees as an opportune time to reassert workers' interests and to hack away at corporate power. "For the first time in 20 years, corporate America is losing legitimacy," he wrote last month to party members, pointing to the Enron and WorldCom debacles. "It is cracking under the weight of its own greed. No longer can it play the goose that lays the golden eggs."

The Labor Party has three main issues: single-payer national health insurance, as in Canada; free tuition for all college and graduate students at public colleges and universities; and labor law changes to make it easier for workers to join unions without employer intimidation. Mr. Mazzocchi complained that it was extremely difficult to unionize workers because trying to do so caused many employers to threaten to close their plants or move overseas.

Many political analysts say the Labor Party's program is unrealistic, exemplifying the sort of big-government approach that even Democrats long ago disowned. The party's proposals, they say, might be embraced in Europe, with its social democratic traditions, but are not likely to get far in the United States, with its emphasis on shrinking government and cutting spending.

The Labor Party has even come under heavy fire from some labor leaders, who say it is undermining the Democratic Party, which they see as the best vehicle to help workers. Conservatives denounce the Labor Party as a crude advocate of class warfare and soaking the rich.

But Mr. Mazzocchi (pronounced muh-ZOCK-key) insists that the party's wish list is not pie in the sky. He says one of the party's mottoes could be "Steal Our Program."

"We're concentrating on issues that resonate," he said. "Right now the cost of tuition is so prohibitive, even at many state universities, that it's hurting many working-class students. Tuition for all these folks is $23 billion. That's nothing."

Although he dropped out of school in ninth grade, Mr. Mazzocchi is a seminal thinker and strategist for what remains of the American left. He spends his days, often in pain, at his modest town house here, where the second floor has been turned into a Labor Party office.

Several unusual accomplishments have helped build his reputation. In 1954, as president of a union local at a Helena Rubenstein cosmetics factory on Long Island, he was one of the first labor leaders to win dental benefits. From the 1950's through the 1970's, he did more than any other union leader to forge ties with environmentalists and scientists while working on such issues as fighting nuclear testing and identifying toxic chemicals that endangered factory workers and residents nearby.

In 1970, as legislative director of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, he played a crucial role in securing passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which is often called the most important pro-worker legislation of the last 50 years.

"What's incredible," Mr. Mazzocchi said, "was the guy who was president then was Richard Nixon, which shows that when you build a big movement from down below, regardless of who's in the White House, you can bring about change."

In 1974, Mr. Mazzocchi was the union's main adviser to Karen Silkwood, an atomic plant worker from Oklahoma, before she died in a mysterious car accident while driving to meet a journalist to publicize safety problems at her plant.

When he speaks, Mr. Mazzocchi often uses the us-against-them, class-tinged speech of the 1930's. In his view, the main issues facing workers have changed little since then: they keep getting squeezed while corporations grow more powerful, and the gap between the rich and everybody else keeps growing.

"Workers are worried today," he said. "They see decent-paying jobs fleeing overseas. They see that they will get the raw end of the stick whenever it comes to corporate restructuring. They understand instinctively and more than ever before that when the economy goes downhill, corporations don't care about their well-being."

Mr. Mazzocchi's childhood in Brooklyn shaped his politics. His father, a unionized worker at a suit factory, lost the family's home because of steep medical bills for his wife, who died of cancer when Mr. Mazzocchi was 6.

Mr. Mazzocchi founded the Labor Party in 1996 at a convention in Cleveland because he was convinced that corporate interests and wealthy donors dominated the Democratic and Republican parties.

He does not see the party, at least now, electing candidates to office. Rather, he said, its focus should be pushing worker-friendly issues into the nation's discourse.

Asserting that Mr. Mazzocchi and his party have an obsolete leftist vision, many critics say it is not surprising that the party has grown slowly and gained little traction.

Mr. Mazzocchi acknowledges that the party has grown more slowly than he had hoped and has tailed off some from the 14,000 members it had four years ago. One reason, he said, is that his illness has sidelined him — the party's main spokesman and booster. He has concentrated lately on signing up union locals rather than individual members, and has helped persuade 350 union locals to pay affiliation fees to show their support. If the party had more money, he said, it could easily double or triple the number of unions.

"When I get into a union hall and I'm able to talk to the members, our message resonates," he said. "American workers aren't going to sit still if things continue to come apart. If you look at the history of American workers, you'd think they're in a sleepy lagoon, and then all of a sudden there is an explosion."

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

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