Labor's Best-Heeled Powerhouse

Whatever the outcome of the fight over job policy, organized labor will wield a tremendous influence in this year's election. The AFL-CIO'S Committee on Political Education (COPE), with a treasury of $2 million raised through members' contributions, will pour not only money but armies of workers into the campaign, mount mass mailings, and mobilize one of the most powerful political forces in the country. The little-known man who directs this power rarely receives journalists, but he recently permitted TIME National Political Correspondent Robert Ajemian to accompany him in New York, Washington and Miami. Ajemian's report:

"Okay, Maryland out," shouts Alexander Barkan in his rasping voice to a roomful of state labor officials meeting in New York, "and get Pennsylvania in here." Barkan watches the group intently as they file in to sit at the long conference table. With his barrel chest, high cheekbones and large crooked teeth, he looks a little like a Sioux chief. As director of COPE, Al Barkan by day's end will have listened to the political reports of his committees from seven Atlantic states. The next day he will fly to Chicago and later Los Angeles to gather the hard facts and intimate gossip that make him the most knowing political tactician in the nation. In 13 years as George Meany's loyal political commissar, Barkan, who earns $37,000 a year, has delivered AFL-CIO manpower and at least $30 million to back candidates--almost all Democrats--friendly to the federation. Labor boasts it can count on the support of a majority of both houses of Congress--57 friends in the Senate and 269 in the House--and Meany's man Barkan helped put most of them there.

"Look, Al," says red-faced Mike Johnson, head of Pennsylvania COPE, who is sitting across the table from Barkan, "this Wallace thing is no joke. He's never been organized this well before. His people are saying leave the CIA alone, leave the FBI alone, and our guys are listening to them. It's serious. Our people want to be for Humphrey, but he's staying out."

Barkan listens and for now says little. At 66, he has heard warnings all of his labor life. He joined the Textile Workers Organizing Committee in 1937. His blunt combativeness, his tirelessness, his gift for labor evangelism made him an ideal recruiter at a time when the Textile Workers were trying to unionize the plants not far from Barkan's home town of Bayonne, N.J. His education helped him too. The son of poor Polish immigrants, he put together enough money to attend the University of Chicago ('33).

For Humphrey. Barkan shares the Pennsylvania group's frustration about Noncandidate Hubert Humphrey. He and the other AFL-CIO leaders are for Humphrey, and they expect him to emerge from a stalemated convention. Meanwhile, they are ready for whatever happens. In 1972 Meany adamantly refused to support George McGovern, but 33 of the federation's 113 unions defied the rule; another 17 jumped to Richard Nixon.

But now things have changed tremendously. Labor is back together, unified by the recent recessions and by opposition to Gerald Ford. "The fanaticism that divided our members is gone," says Barkan. "All that heat over things like busing and abortion is gone. Now the issue is clear and simple: jobs."

At his COPE meetings Barkan, sounding a little like the firebrand he was in his early Textile days, whips up enthusiasm for more voter registration--among youth, blacks, Latinos, retired union members. He reminds his audience of the astonishing capabilities of COPE'S million-dollar computer. It is filled with the names of 14 million union members and can turn up almost anything. A canvasser can swiftly find out which members need to be registered or even which side of the block they live on.

"We're going to have the best-organized, best-financed political force in the history of organized labor," says Barkan. "No one else will have what we have. All we need is a candidate."

To help nominate the right man, the AFL-CIO is encouraging its member unions and their locals to place delegates on the slate of any candidate they choose. Then no matter who surfaces there will be a strong labor presence (the hope is for 500 out of 3,008 delegates) in the convention brokering that AFL-CIO is certain will occur.

Besides Wallace, the only candidate who worries labor at all is Jimmy Carter. Most veterans like Barkan find Carter too slippery on the issues, particularly the right-to-work laws. And ever since he learned that Carter at a governors' conference in 1974 spoke disparagingly of some "cigar-smoking labor dictators," Barkan has been scornfully aloof. Carter has tried to call him, has even sent emissaries, but so far Barkan has avoided him.

There is little middle ground with Al Barkan; he is inflexibly tough on his opponents. He has contempt for the Americans for Democratic Action and other Democratic liberals who, he says, are willing to wreck everything in order to get their way. "These kooks and feminists and New Lefts have never won an election in their lives," he growls. "And yet the candidates are absolutely terrified of them." Many of the liberals, in turn, think that the stubborn Barkan belongs back in the Stone Age.

Barkan and COPE do not always win. Last year they lost mayoralty races in Indianapolis and Minneapolis, and after years of struggling they have been unable to overturn a single one of the 19 different state laws against the union shop.

The chief target of Barkan's anger continues to be Robert Strauss, who became Democratic National Chairman only after the AFL-CIO accepted him. Both Meany and Barkan, in their implacable way, consider Strauss a traitor who caved in to party reformers on the issue of proportional representation after promising labor that he would oppose them. Last month Strauss phoned Barkan and asked to see Meany for just ten minutes.

Strauss wanted the labor leaders to know he felt there was going to be a deadlocked convention and that Meany should be present to help make the final choice. Barkan coolly advised Strauss to write a letter to the big man --but Meany has refused to answer it.

Long Reach. Barkan's plain office in Washington is like a center ring. Calls go to and from every political district in the country. A call about campaign strategy comes from Maryland Congressman Paul Sarbanes, whom COPE is backing in the Democratic primary against former Senator Joseph Tydings. The Barkan reach extends almost everywhere, even to backing certain Republicans. Right now he is sifting candidates to replace retiring Republican Senators Paul Fannin in Arizona and Hiram Fong in Hawaii; in Michigan he is looking for a successor to Democrat Phil Hart, who is stepping down too. "We like Mickey O'Hara," he tells a Michigan caller, referring to the Democratic Congressman. New York Republican Congressman Peter Peyser telephones about his challenge to Senator James Buckley in the primary. Says Barkan to Peyser, who has a solid COPE voting record: "I had a dream last night: you and Pat Moynihan in the Senate. Then I had a nightmare: I saw Buckley and Bella Abzug instead." He asks his secretary to get New York Governor Hugh Carey on the phone. Barkan wants to talk to him about Moynihan. Recently Barkan had flown to New York to have lunch with the U.N. Ambassador and urge him to run. When Moynihan said he was worried about money, Barkan promised him a substantial sum from COPE'S treasury. "You've talked a lot about getting into politics," he told Moynihan in his gruff, fatherly fashion. "You'll never get an opportunity as good as this again." Moynihan sounded intrigued--and not long afterward resigned his U.N. post.

At the AFL-CIO annual convention in Miami last week, Barkan was hard at work applying some labor muscle; he used his influence to get Ohio Democratic Congressman Wayne Hays to propose legislation overturning the ruling by the Federal Election Commission that allows corporations to solicit employees, including union members, for political funds. Republicans will fight this provision, but labor counts on friendly Democrats to help pass it.

For all his toughness, Barkan has a large shaft of humor. When his state COPE officers in Virginia recently suggested endorsing former Admiral Elmo Zumwalt to challenge Senator Harry

Byrd, who is no labor favorite, Barkan was more than usually interested. He had been a radioman aboard the battleship Alabama during World War II for four years and had rarely conferred with admirals. Zumwalt came to be interviewed by him and on the way to lunch, as they approached the revolving door of the AFL-CIO building, he stepped back to let Barkan pass through first. Barkan spun the door and himself all the way round and returned to the surprised Zumwalt. "That felt good, Admiral," he said with a grin. "Do it again."

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