CLINTON PULLS UNION STRINGS; WHITE HOUSE WOOED AFL-CIO FOR GORE NOD.

Byline: Steven Greenhouse and Katharine Q. Seelye The New York Times

With the AFL-CIO's endorsement hanging in the balance, President Clinton did his vice president a big favor Sunday morning.

According to Douglas Dority, president of the Food and Commercial Workers Union, Clinton telephoned a friend of Dority's to make one last nudge to ensure that Dority's union would provide the crucial swing vote needed to secure the labor federation's important endorsement of Al Gore.

Clinton also called John Sweeney, the labor federation president, over the weekend. While it is unclear how much Clinton's calls ultimately affected the outcome, they were the final steps in an intense effort by the Gore campaign - and the White House itself - to win labor's support for the vice president with an endorsement that the AFL-CIO is expected to approve on Wednesday.

To line up labor's support, Clinton appeared at a dinner on Thursday honoring the Teamsters' president, James Hoffa. And in recent weeks the White House has moved to limit imports of low-priced steel, part of an effort to placate the powerful United Steelworkers of America.

In August, Clinton and four Cabinet members traveled to Chicago to address the concerns of eight union presidents worried about the loss of factory jobs. Clinton told them that on the recommendation of Gore he was setting up a task force to determine how to save jobs.

The White House's full-court press is one of several factors that have put Gore on the verge of grabbing the biggest plum so far in the early months of the 2000 presidential campaign. Equally critical, many labor leaders said Monday, were the vice president's record on labor issues as well as the need for Sweeney to prove that he could unite the federation around Gore.

In recent days, Gore and his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Sen. Bill Bradley, have battled over the labor endorsement, with Bradley urging union leaders not to rush to make an endorsement so early.

The labor endorsement is a boon to candidates because the AFL-CIO has 13 million members, prints millions of leaflets and mobilizes thousands of union members to get out the vote and operate phone banks.

In an interview Monday, Dority said the Food and Commercial Workers' Union decided to back Gore for a reason that was haunting many of Gore's labor supporters: If Gore did not gain an endorsement from the labor federation it would be construed as a devastating setback to the vice president at a time when Bradley's strength seems to be growing each day.

Gore's most outspoken supporter in labor, Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said, ``There was a real fear that if we didn't have an endorsement here for Gore, it would have cut him off at the knees.''

Last Thursday, even though it was clear that Gore was the favorite of organized labor, it was looking iffy whether the AFL-CIO would endorse him at its convention this week. Some union leaders were pushing for a delay, in hope of wresting more concessions from Gore and the White House.

That day, Sweeney was so discouraged that he told aides he might not put an endorsement up to a vote at the convention because several pivotal unions were not making the movement toward Gore that he expected.

Sometime early Friday, AFL-CIO officials said, Sweeney decided to stick his neck out and push hard for an endorsement even though he was uncertain he could muster the needed two-thirds majority of the 700 convention delegates.

In an interview, Sweeney said he decided to work hard to line up backing for the vice president because he believed that Gore has been a good and loyal friend to American workers and that Gore was going to be the Democratic presidential nominee.

Sweeney, union officials said, saw that Gore nearly had the two-thirds needed, and he was confident that if he pushed for an endorsement, that would move several fence-sitting unions toward backing Gore, enabling the vice president to clinch the two-thirds.

In fact, after Sweeney spoke out for an endorsement on Friday, several fence-sitting unions other than the Food and Commercial Workers announced that they would back an AFL-CIO endorsement of Gore. Those unions were the Office and Professional Employees International Union, the Laborers International Union of North America and the National Treasury Employees Union.

In addition, one of the largest unions in the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union, gave Sweeney assurances this past weekend that it would back an endorsement if its vote was needed.

For many union leaders, there was another big concern, that the AFL-CIO and Sweeney would be weakened and embarrassed if the labor federation did not endorse Gore at the convention, when Sweeney was such an outspoken supporter of the vice president.

``If there wasn't an endorsement, it would have hurt John,'' McEntee said. ``The guy worked so hard for it.''

Many union leaders interviewed said that the question always was not whether they were going to endorse Gore, but when. Several opposed an early endorsement because they said their members were not yet paying attention to the presidential campaign.

``Our members weren't mentally prepared to talk about the presidential election,'' said Dority of the Food and Commercial Workers' Union. ``We thought it would be better to wait until closer to the election. But we saw that not endorsing at this time might send a message that we're against Gore, and we didn't want to be seen that way.''

The stepped-up involvement from the White House and the Gore campaign came only after many labor leaders had complained that Gore had not given them enough one-on-one attention. At the same time, Bradley was calling the leaders two or three times a day, union officials said.

Some union officials said that they were receptive to the argument Gore has been making recently that he has fought for union issues for a long time while Bradley quit the Senate in 1996 and has been viewed as doing little for labor.

``Bradley's been out of the Senate now for how long?'' asked William Burga, president of the Ohio affiliate of the AFL-CIO. ``Gore stayed in there. I think that means something.''

But several union officials, most notably the presidents of the Teamsters and the autoworkers, said there should be no rush for the AFL-CIO to make an endorsement because they thought holding off might wrest more concessions from candidates. Other union officials argued against an early endorsement because the Gore campaign was in disarray and Bradley was coming on strong.

Shea, the Sweeney aide, said, ``Because it was early, because of the atmosphere - is the Gore campaign falling flat? - because Bradley was doing a good job of reaching out, people got into this, maybe we should just hang back. Why rush? Nobody was saying we prefer Bradley over Gore. John's reaction was: That's not a strategy.''

For labor officials like Sweeney, loyalty is an important factor, and they have seen Gore speak out for years on labor's issues, ranging from the minimum wage to a patients' bill of rights. At two recent meetings of the AFL-CIO's executive committee, the vice president won rave reviews for defending workers' right to organize and for condemning corporations that violate the law by firing workers who support unionization efforts.

``Al Gore has been very much in the fray with us, on education, on health, on children's issues'' said Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers. ``Over the years he's been with us very steadfastly.''

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Photo: (color) AFL-CIO President John Sweeney delivers the keynote speech at the opening of the organization's convention in L.A.

Rene Macura/Associated Press