“It’s not like threading a needle. There is going to be plenty of room for a Democrat to win,” Rosenthal said.

The AFL-CIO does not yet favor a specific presidential candidate in the 2004 presidential election, he said.

“To tell the truth, I don’t care who the Democratic nominee is. Any one of them would be so much better than having Bush in the White House, so my question would be ‘Who can win?’

“I would say the labor movement is in something of a crisis,” he added. “We can expect to see an attack on the rights and privileges that union workers have worked to gain over the past 50 years.”

In preparation for the next election, the AFL-CIO is about to launch a new program to mobilize black, Latino and women voters, who have been vastly underrepresented at the polls in past years.

The $20-40 million program, scheduled to be operational in selected states by the end of February, will identify issues important to these voters to help the AFL-CIO find candidates representing their interests.

Yet Rosenthal emphasized that the AFL-CIO is not only concerned with gaining political power.

“We’re helping to build a permanent structure in these places and not just win elections,” he said.

—Staff writer Nathan J. Heller can be reached at heller@fas.harvard.edu.