ATERLOO, Iowa - Surrounded by dozens of working women at an AFL-CIO facility here, Vice President Al Gore had an opportunity again last Friday to demonstrate his affinity with organized labor, a connection that Bill Bradley is finding difficult to break in Iowa.
Conducting conversations while walking about the floor, Gore empathized with the women's stories of hardship and unfulfilled aspirations in the job market. At the same time, he expressed support for child care programs, Medicare coverage for prescription drugs, equitable pay for women, and other working-class issues. Wearing a mustard-colored, long-sleeve knit shirt and slacks, the vice president almost looked as though he had come off the loading dock himself.
The event in Waterloo, a blue-collar, union town in eastern Iowa, dramatized Gore's alliance with the AFL-CIO. After winning the national organization's endorsement in October, Gore has been aided significantly on the local level in Iowa by the support of the 150,000-member state group.
''In a Democratic contest, labor is extraordinarily important in Iowa,'' said Governor Tom Vilsack, a Democrat. ''They have the mechanism, the organization, and the experience to get people out, and they have people in every part of the state.''
Labor's embrace of Gore has somewhat frustrated Bradley's efforts to cut into Gore's lead here. Bradley, a former New Jersey senator and Gore's only rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, established a beachhead in Iowa over the summer during a period when ''Gore ignored us,'' said Dan Lucas, director of Bradley's campaign here. ''It enabled us to pick up ground and build a precinct organization across most of the state.''
But Lucas acknowledged that Gore's recent attack - abetted by organized labor - on Bradley's proposal for a national health insurance program had ''raised doubts'' about Bradley among Iowa voters. Gore has suggested that the Bradley initiative is too costly and would lead to higher taxes.
Lucas said their campaign had been victimized by a leaflet filled with erroneous charges distributed by the United Auto Workers here. The one-page document compares Gore and Bradley on several issues and charges Bradley, among other things, with voting ''against already struggling seniors by trying to raise the retirement age of both Medicare and Social Security to 70.''
Lucas felt compelled to send a memo to Democratic officials around the state on the subject: Titled ''Setting the record straight,'' the Lucas memo said the UAW broadside ''distorted Sen. Bradley's positions on public education, Social Security, medicine, agriculture and his work to oppose President Reagan's efforts to cut taxes for the rich in the early 1980s.''
The intervention by the UAW in Iowa was not authorized by the international auto workers headquarters, which opposed the AFL-CIO's endorsement of Gore, and labor sources here say that Dave Neill, the UAW political director in Iowa, was reprimanded by union officials in Detroit for the move.
Two years ago, the UAW boycotted a Democratic dinner in Des Moines where Gore was the guest speaker because of the vice president's support of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the UAW opposed.
With Gore holding the support of organized labor and the endorsement of most of the state's top Democrats, including Senator Tom Harkin, Bradley has been forced to look for different sources of help.
Recent polls in the state give Gore a comfortable double-digit lead. But Lucas contends that undecided Democrats constitute ''this huge egg'' that their telephone canvasses show growing bigger. ''Our challenge is to find and motivate them,'' he said.
Lucas said Bradley was ''doing very well'' in small communities and among middle-to-upper income groups, an observation ratified by a Des Moines Register poll that found Bradley leading Gore in Democratic households with incomes topping $75,000.
Vilsack, who is remaining neutral, said in an interview that Bradley should ''focus on the nontraditional - young people, the college campus, the dissatisfied family that's not necessarily Democratic but has concerns about the conservative nature of the Republican Party and is looking for a candidate.''
