Rites of Winter At Bal Harbour

For the sultans of Big Labor, a perennial rite of winter is the annual meeting of the AFL-CIO's executive council in Bal Harbour, Fla., just north of Miami Beach. There, at the garish 15-story Americana Hotel, the heads of 34 AFL-CIO unions representing some 20 million workers--about 21% of U.S. wage earners--gather every February to talk strategy under the sun and in sybaritic splendor. TIME Correspondent Philip Taubman attended this year's eight-day meeting and filed this report:

"Come on, Lucky Pierre," shouted the chap in the stands at a Miami jai alai fronton. "I can't miss with you." It was Jerry Wurf, Washington-based boss of the State, County and Municipal Workers, the nation's largest public employees union (750,000 members), cheering on a lanky player on the court. But when unlucky Pierre swung his curved basket at the speeding white jai alai ball and missed, Wurf, who had not won a bet all night, resignedly tore up his losing $2 ticket. "If we don't win the next one," he told a companion, "I want to go home."

For Wurf and the other union chiefs at the AFL-CIO meeting, the play seemed as earnest as the work. The labor leaders had converged on Bal Harbour with their customary large supporting casts. Teachers Union Chief Albert Shanker, for example, arrived with his wife and three children. Other union bosses brought along legions of aides, among them their legislative advisers, public relations assistants and political operatives, as well as a secretary or two.

Not that there is all that much staff work to be done. At 9:30 a.m. every morning, the chiefs gather around a large rectangular table where they discuss union matters until noon. After lunch, they join the leisure class for the rest of the day. The daytime pleasures include golf, deep-sea fishing, the thoroughbreds at nearby Gulfstream Park and gin rummy beside the pool. By night, the union moguls could be found at restaurants like the Americana's Gaucho Room--known in AFL-CIO circles as the "Gotcha Room," in honor of its $70 steak dinner for two--or such Miami spas as the Cafe Chauveron, where a $100 tab for two is standard.

The best show in town--also rated PG was, as usual, Meany himself, 82, who has been the pre-eminent U.S. labor figure since the 1960s. Bothered by an old hip ailment, he needs a cane to get around. His eyesight is so poor that when he plays golf, he has to have his aides tell him how far it is to the green. But during "the Meany show," the midday press conference that follows each closed-door, morning meeting, the AFL-CIO chiefs humor is as quick and salty as ever.

At one point, Meany managed to simultaneously skewer an old adversary from the Ford Administration and a new one in the Carter White House --Chief Economic Adviser Charles Schultze, who has expressed interest in wage-price restraints. Nodding in the general direction of Washington, Meany cracked, "A fella by the name of Alan Greenspan, he's still over there. But he's changed his name to Charlie Schultze." Meany, for all the talk of his retirement this year, still clearly enjoys his hoots and hurrahs.

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