By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON, April 22 -- The American labor movement, while waging its biggest battle ever against trade liberalization, is trying to fend off charges from many economists, business executives and members of Congress that it has re-embraced protectionism.
Many critics assert that labor's across-the-board fight against trade expansion measures, including the China and Africa trade bills, represents a crass effort to protect American jobs by preventing imports from increasing.
Insisting that they have jettisoned their past protectionism, union officials say they oppose these trade initiatives only because they fail to protect the rights of foreign workers.
With its power magnified in a campaign year, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., a federation of 68 member unions, has been by far the most powerful voice against the China trade bill, helping sway scores of Democrats, including Richard A. Gephardt, the House Democratic leader, to oppose it. The Senate is expected to pass the China bill easily. But lawmakers say that largely because of labor's aggressive opposition, the vote in the House, expected next month, is now too close to call.
"Labor's been both obstructionist and protectionist," said Representative David Dreier, a California Republican who is one of his party's leaders on trade issues.
The China trade bill, which would normalize trade relations with China, and speed that country's entry into the World Trade Organization, is hardly the only trade battle labor is waging. In Seattle last December, unions sent more than 30,000 people into the streets to help persuade World Trade Organization ministers not to initiate a new round of global talks aimed at removing trade barriers.
Labor's outspoken opposition is complicating matters for the Africa trade bill, on which both houses are expected to vote next month, and which would reduce tariffs and quotas on imports from some of the world's poorest countries. In addition, labor played an important role in persuading the Clinton administration to water down a World Bank proposal that aimed to increase exports from poor countries by having rich nations eliminate tariffs and quotas on some goods.
In addition, labor has blocked, for three years running, Congress's efforts to make it easier for the administration to negotiate extending the North American Free Trade Agreement to other countries.
With President Clinton eager to make trade liberalization part of his legacy, labor's resistance to the trade measures has irritated the Clinton administration. One senior administration official said that "the indiscriminate nature of labor's opposition to trade exposes a protectionist grain within the labor movement."
But labor leaders insist that they are neither protectionist nor reflexively opposed to increased imports, as many unions were in the early 1980's. Back then, many unions called for quotas and other protections when the strong dollar and surging imports hobbled the steel and auto industries.
Nowadays, union leaders assert that they are open to trade expansion measures so long as those measures include core worker protections, like the right to form labor unions and a ban on child labor.
They deny that these concerns are protectionist. "We really have learned from the past that we have to have core labor standards in our trade agreements if they're going to benefit workers in the United States as well as workers in the countries that are our trading partners," said John J. Sweeney, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s president.
To be sure, one reason the unions are worried about lax labor standards overseas is that they make it attractive for multinational companies to move operations to low-wage production sites.
They fear, for example, that the China deal will encourage many American companies to move production operations to China and then export their goods to the United States. Unions say this happened with the North American Free Trade Agreement, and they fear that such an exodus of production would cause a loss of American jobs and increase the trade deficit with China, which is expected to exceed $60 billion this year.
Labor leaders also dislike the China deal because it would end annual trade reviews, which labor favors as a way to pressure China over its violations of worker and human rights.
When 10,000 union members mobbed Capitol Hill two weeks ago to lobby against the China deal, they repeatedly talked about how China has imprisoned labor leaders who protested harsh conditions or nonpayment of wages.
Mr. Sweeney has been pressured to take a tough stance on trade by a handful of powerful unions especially vulnerable to rising imports: the Auto Workers, Steelworkers, Teamsters and apparel and textile workers.
Many corporate leaders argue that the A.F.L.-C.I.O. is actually undermining the interests of American workers by opposing the China trade agreement. In business's view, the accord, which calls for China to remove many trade barriers, will increase American exports and thus create jobs for American workers.
"Labor is being isolationist and myopic," said Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce. "If you take a blank piece of paper and draw a line and write on one side the things that the U.S. had to do for China, it would be empty, but if you write on the other side everything China had to do to remove barriers to American goods and services you'd cover the paper top to bottom."
Clinton administration officials say the agreement is designed to spur American exports, not an exodus of American factories to China. Pointing to the economic boom and record low unemployment, several economists criticized the labor movement for failing to recognize that even with the exodus of many factories to Mexico, the nation's economy -- and workers -- can flourish.
James P. Hoffa, the Teamsters' president, said labor's opposition to the China deal is in no way protectionist. "We believe in fair trade," he said. "We hope that China buys all kinds of products from the United States. We want to see an explosion of trade with China, but we don't want to have it one-sided the way it is now."
Many labor leaders share the view that trade liberalization measures help business, but not workers. But administration officials and business leaders take issue with that view, pointing to the many studies showing that expanded trade raises living standards around the world and is pivotal to improving the lot of workers in the poorest countries.
Some trade experts argue that the labor movement remains, at heart, protectionist but has grown more sophisticated in its language and tactics. They say labor's insistence on blocking trade agreements unless they include workers' rights provisions can in effect be a protectionist brake on freer trade because there is little prospect other countries will accept such workers' rights language.
"The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has really successfully packaged its public presentation," said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics. "They're saying, 'No, no, we would love to have this bill if it contained fundamental labor and environmental standards.' But I don't think they're looking for a solution. They're looking for continued obstacles."
Union leaders say that in resisting trade bills that do not include workers' rights, they are being no more protectionist than corporate lobbyists who vow to oppose trade agreements unless they protect intellectual property rights.
Labor's hostility to the Africa trade bill has come under heavy fire, with many lawmakers, business leaders and economists questioning how labor could oppose a bill aimed at increasing exports from the poorest continent. One of the bill's most vocal opponents is the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, which fears that the bill will produce a surge in apparel exports.
Mark Levinson, the union's chief economist, said his union opposes the bill not for protectionist reasons, but because it lacks worker protections and is skewed toward business by requiring African nations to take business-friendly steps, like cutting corporate taxes, to qualify for tariff reductions.:
