Blue-collar unions might command two days' wages for half a day's work.

Last time, he had the support of many intellectuals, but on the ground, the people who vote were blue-collar union workers and churchgoers."

Blue-collar union officials and workers, the traditional backbone of the Social Democratic Party, are upset too.

Labor unions, said Ingemar Goransson, a blue-collar union negotiator, saw their mission as "not trying to save jobs."

But leaders of the blue-collar unions that supported Mr. Gephardt said they were unsure what they would do next.

But Senator Harkin's opponents are not discounting his labor support, particularly from blue-collar unions like the United Mine Workers of America.

After university, Xamon worked in the union movement for various white- and blue-collar unions, including the State School Teachers' Union of Western Australia.

But while shunning the tactics of blue-collar unions, Mr. Chase has often surprised his union's 2.3 million members by saying they have an important lesson to learn from the steelworkers.

Many Democrats consider gun control dicey for their party - a priority for their urban base but an issue that costs votes in rural precincts and among blue-collar union members.

The biggest federation of blue-collar unions in the oil industry, Fedepetrol, is split between pro- and anti-government factions, making it difficult to predict how its members will respond to the strike.

Against the backdrop of the Lincoln Technical Institute in blue-collar Union, N.J., Mr. Bush proposed expanding Federal job-training programs by $10 billion over five years.

At a time of declining membership in traditional blue-collar unions, the Internet is spawning a new form of collective organization that is enabling once-compliant white-collar workers to put pressure on management.

The 19 blue-collar unions that had backed Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who has withdrawn from the race, announced their endorsement of Mr. Kerry on Wednesday.

It was established during a great wave of blue-collar union formation in the 1860s, during which the iron puddlers, locomotive engineers, cigarmakers, carpenters, tailors, painters and heaters' unions were founded.

"A lot of the unions, especially blue-collar unions, are concerned about the issue of a hiring hall that primarily serves illegal immigrants that are not, shall we say, on the books," he said.

A Comfortable Retirement And Fehr, who represents about 1,000 players, has benefited with a salary higher than most of the top officers of blue-collar unions with tens of thousands of workers.

Increasingly, blue-collar unions in search of white-collar workers to organize are financing campaigns for graduate-student unions; in California, for example, the unions are supported by the United Auto Workers.

But his speeches are just a backdrop to organized labor's extremely expensive union showdown between the mostly blue-collar unions supporting Representative Richard Gephardt and the service and government workers backing Dr. Dean.

Later, in a more reflective moment, Mr. Gephardt described the rally as part of an all-out effort by blue-collar unions to reassert their political influence, which has been declining for decades along with their membership.

In Boston earlier this month, there was a first for the nation: a blue-collar union won a housing-assistance section in its contract with a group of hotels to help its members cope with a surge in housing prices.

In 1989, ideological battle lines were clear, between Mr. da Silva, a blue-collar union leader on the left, and Fernando Collor de Mello, an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, on the right.

Over the past 30 years, some 500,000 New Jersey workers have lived this story, the story of the disappearance of blue-collar union manufacturing jobs and with them, the security and prosperity of a huge class of Americans.

While it has previously been difficult to bring such highly paid professional workers into a dispute on the side of a blue-collar union, the pilots' union, the Air Line Pilots Association, is honoring the machinists' picket lines.

In contrast to the blue-collar union members whose predominantly Roman Catholic background made them conservative on some social issues, he said, the new New Hampshire Democrat is a "Volvo Democrat," well off and socially liberal.