AFL-CIO Chief Claims Reagan Budget Is Flawed

In a sweeping denunciation of what he called "occult economic experiments on the American people." AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland charged last night that the Reagan budget "helps the wealthy at the expense of middle-class workers and the poor, comforts the comfortable, and afflicts the afflicted."

Kirkland addressed an AFL-CIO Regional Conference at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston only hours after marching in a rally of 6000 coal miners and black lung victims in Washington. The miners, in the midst of a two-day work stoppage, were protesting the Reagan administration's proposed cutbacks in benefits for victims of the respiratory ailment.

Kirkland called on AFL-CIO members to "launch a grass-roots campaign throughout the country to make our voice heard in the halls of Congress." Otherwise, he said. "The administration's program will produce human suffering in the short run and retard economic growth enough to haunt us for years to come."

While denying that apathy within the labor movement contributed to Democratic losses in 1980. Kirkland promised greater political involvement in politics at the primary level.

"I see no reason for any head-hanging, recriminations or apologies," he told his audience of leaders from AFL-CIO member unions in eight northeastern states, adding, "You did a good job."

But he said that "to win an election, we need organization, issues and candidates. We have the organization, but we can no longer stand on the sidelines while others formulate the issues and select the candidates."

"If the legislative and political doors are jammed, we will pick up our other tools and pry the doors open. We will organize, educate and agitate," he said.

After the speech some members of the audience commented on Kirkland's outspokenness. "A lot of people think Kirkland is under the gun for getting them in trouble in the elections," one observer said. "Now he's the first person to come out against all these cuts--the Democrats are all silent. I think he's trying to generate support, to build a base," he added.

The conference itself is a sign of Kirkland's new commitment to organization. David M. Jessup, assistant to the director for the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education, said. This year's seven regional conferences are the first comprehensive meetings of their kind on all labor issues, and the first to be addressed by the AFL-CIO President, he added.

One union leader called Kirkland's attendance a welcome act of leadership. "By the end of his time [the late former President George] Meany was 85 years old, and you don't take an 85-year-old man out to conferences," he said.

When asked after his speech about his influence on the rank-and-file, Kirkland responded. "I was marching today with the coal miners about black lung. We had 8000 coal miners." He added, "When somebody makes the charge that we don't represent the rank-and-file, then we bring some people to show them."

Kirkland criticized the supply-side theory championed by Budget Director David Stockman. "We are not a nation of guinea pigs who can be expended in the interest of testing unproven economic hypotheses," he said.

Ironic

"It is ironic that conservatives who so long ranted against liberal experiments in social engineering should now be willing to turn our society into a vast laboratory for academic theorists of the likes of Laffer and Friedman," he added.

"Students are going to get it in the neck particularly with student loans and reductions in federal aid," Kirkland said