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Unions Decide To Wait Before Endorsing Candidates

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By JESSE J. HOLLAND, The Associated Press

Published: October 22, 2007

WASHINGTON - Despite the candidates' pleas for endorsements, some of the most powerful labor unions are sitting on the sidelines until the presidential primaries begin to thin out the Democratic field.

It is a tough call for the unions, analysts say, because the eight Democrats are all friends of labor.

Unions still are feeling burned after they went out on a limb early in the 2004 contest, only to watch as their anointed candidates crashed and burned.

The 2008 candidates 'might like labor to come out and endorse in the primary, but the labor movement is only going to do that if they see some great advantage for them,' said Paul F. Clark, head of the department of labor studies and employment relations at Penn State University. 'Not all unions think that that is something that will benefit them.'

Leading the pack of fence-sitters are politically powerful unions such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which gave Democrats $3.1 million in the 2006 elections.

The Service Employees International Union recently disappointed the leading contenders, who had sought its money and foot soldiers, by declining to make a national endorsement.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the largest unions in the world and a powerful player in the Democratic Party, is uncommitted in the race, too.

The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation, has not found any candidate to be so much better than the rest that it justifies an endorsement before the first primary.

These unions plan to wait for a nominee to emerge before they spend some of their substantial resources in hopes of putting a Democrat back in the White House in January 2009.

Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and other candidates have telephoned national and local union leaders to make the case for why each of them deserves an endorsement.

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