A top U.S. labor leader called on Minnesota workers to mobilize before the 2004 election in an effort to jettison "the most anti-union administration in the history of this country."

In a 15-minute Labor Day speech on Harriet Island in St. Paul, Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, declared that the country was "deeply out of control," and he blamed President Bush.

"We need a change in the White House!" Trumka shouted to the crowd attending the annual Labor Day Picnic of the St. Paul Trades & Labor Assembly.

"The economy is in a ditch right now. We've had 3 million jobs lost in the last three years. We've had record trade and budget deficits, record job loss.

"Social Security, workplace health and safety, unions and society itself are under attack. We've got to mobilize for the most important national election in our history."

The AFL-CIO was the host of a national forum last month in Chicago, during which the nine Democratic candidates for president spoke. The labor organization will not endorse anyone before its executive council meets in October, Trumka said in an interview after his speech.

He would not say whom he favored.

"There are a lot of good candidates," he said. "They all have said they were for worker rights and for fair trade."

Trumka called Bush "very beatable," because "nothing he's done has helped the economy."

Joining Trumka on stage toward the end of his speech were four Minnesota workers who said that their efforts to form or join a union had been met with psychological or physical intimidation.

U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., who also spoke, said afterward that the workers' stories did not surprise her.

"I've been present when management refused to take petitions signed by workers voting for a union," she said, referring to her days as a Sears manager in the early 1990s. "What those people were saying was the truth."

On a warm, pleasant day, Trumka's speech drew about 500 people, part of an overall attendance of more than 3,000.

Maurice Wickstrom, a 47-year-old ironworker from Coon Rapids, agreed with Trumka that Bush was spearheading an anti-union thrust throughout the country.

"With the Republicans in power, nonunion workers are taking union jobs," he said. "We have to do something. Union workers have to be on their toes."

Trumka said this was the first Minnesota Labor Day without the late Sen. Paul Wellstone and his wife, Sheila, both of whom died in a plane crash last year.

Between two tents, picnic organizers had erected a makeshift memorial to the pro-labor senator and his wife: several large poster-pictures that were occasionally toppled by the wind. Yet, as fast as one fell, people rushed to right it.

We "lost one of our greatest defenders," Trumka said. "One of our heroes."

© Copyright 2003 Star Tribune

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