AFL-CIO TO AID UPS STRIKERS.

Byline: Steven Greenhouse The New York Times

Ratcheting up the stakes in the United Parcel Service strike, John Sweeney, the AFL-CIO's president, announced Tuesday that the nation's labor unions would lend the International Brotherhood of Teamsters $10 million a week for ``many, many weeks'' to sustain members during the strike.

Officials with the AFL-CIO said the unions had never before lined up so much financial support for a strike, demonstrating that labor leaders view the walkout as a pivotal showdown for the increasingly assertive labor movement that hopes to show that it cannot be pushed around by management.

``Because their fight is our fight, we are making this strike our strike,'' Sweeney said at a news conference at the headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Washington. ``Before the week is out we will have enough loan commitments from other unions, large and small, to finance the worker side of this confrontation for a long strike, if that's what it takes - many, many weeks at $10 million a week.''

Ron Carey, president of the Teamsters, welcomed the financial aid as an unusually generous show of solidarity. The loans will be used to finance strike benefits of $55 a week for each member and public relations efforts by the Teamsters to help strikers endure a long walkout.

The strike fund went broke in 1994 and benefits were eliminated. Last year when Carey balanced the union's budget, he set the benefit at $55 a week. But the union will have to dip into its general fund to begin paying benefits at the end of this week.

The unprecedented size of the financial assistance announced Tuesday, labor leaders say, stems from the sheer number of workers on strike against UPS and the symbolic importance of the issues involved: pensions and part-time work. In addition, this strike is by far the biggest test that Sweeney's labor movement has faced since he took the AFL-CIO's helm 22 months ago, pledging to revive the movement.

While Sweeney sought to give the strikers the wherewithal for a long strike, James Kelly, United Parcel's chairman, issued a layoff warning that union officials said was designed to push the strikers to return to work.

He said that if the strike, now in its 10th day, lasts two weeks, the drop in business will cause layoffs of 15,000 unionized workers - and possibly many more if the strike lasts a month or more.

``The longer it goes on, the fewer jobs we'll have, so this is about destroying jobs at UPS,'' Kelly said on NBC's program ``Today.''

Carey said the talk of layoffs was ``intimidation,'' and he questioned whether the company had lost enough business to make layoffs necessary.

Kelly once again called on President Clinton to seek an injunction ordering the Teamsters back to work under the Taft-Hartley Act, which gives the president such powers when a strike is deemed to have done serious damage to the nation's security or economy.

``We have customers who are closing down shifts,'' Kelly said. ``We have customers who are laying off people. We have customers who have their business stacked up, and they tell me they can't hold out much longer.''

The Teamsters and their labor allies vigorously oppose an injunction, asserting that the strike has not caused severe economic damage. Union leaders say they fear they will lose bargaining leverage if the strikers are forced back to work.