RIDGEPORT, Pa. - Al Gore's sometimes shaky ties to labor were strengthened yesterday, as an effusively thankful vice president accepted the long-awaited endorsement of the United Auto Workers.
''I am grateful to you more than I can say in words,'' Gore told a crowd of boisterous UAW members at a rally at Willow Run airport near Detroit, where a red carpet had been rolled out to greet the presumed Democratic presidential nominee.
''This means the world to me. I respect you, I appreciate what you have done, and I thank you for your help.''
UAW president Stephen Yokich - who once accused Gore of ''holding hands with the profiteers of the world'' for backing a free trade agreement with China - offered his full support to the vice president.
''You're going to be our candidate,'' Yokich told the vice president, who pumped his fists exuberantly in the air as Yokich reported the unanimous UAW board vote to endorse Gore.
''Al Gore is a clear choice. I don't think Bush Junior had a chance,'' Yokich said. ''You name it, he's against what we believe in.''
Gore said he and his running mate, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, would not only ''defend the right to organize, we're going to strengthen it.'' Lieberman, an observant Jew, skipped the labor event so he could be back in Washington to observe the sabbath with his family.
The vice president acknowledged his support of free-trade agreements - pacts that organized labor have opposed - but said, ''we have to use trade to lift up labor and environmental standards around the world.''
Gore campaign staff were relieved to get the endorsement, especially before the Democratic National Convention begins in Los Angeles on Monday. Membership in the 700,000-member union is high in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan, a senior Gore campaign adviser noted, giving Gore a boost in those delegate-rich states.
''After a long process, they made their decision, and I beleive it was the right one,'' said Donna Brazile, Gore's campaign manager. ''This campaign has the support of working families,'' she said, echoing the campaign's pre-convention theme.
For an incumbent vice president and the Democratic Party's choice for president, Gore has had a comparatively tough time nailing down support from some sectors of organized labor. While he won the backing of the AFL-CIO last October, only this week did he get the endorsement of the UAW, after persistent lobbying by his campaign.
Some UAW members said they were still annoyed with Gore for his support for international trade agreements that the workers said could cost Americans jobs.
It was best that the union held back its support as long as it did, said member Dan Shepherd. ''If you get into a commitment too early, then you run the risk of giving the union a black eye if the guy turns out wrong,'' Shepherd said.
The UAW had flirted with the idea of backing consumer advocate Ralph Nader for president. Nader has been getting about 4 to 5 percent of voter support in opinion polls - possibly enough to tip the balance from Gore to George W. Bush in some key states.
The vice president hasn't won the endorsement of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, whose president, James P. Hoffa, was honored at a reception at the Republican National Convention earlier this month.
Hoffa is a delegate-at-large at the Democratic convention next week, but the union is still not likely to issue an endorsement - if it decides to endorse at all - until after Labor Day, said Teamsters spokesman Bret Caldwell.
''Hoffa's always been a Democrat, but he's an uncommitted delegate,'' Caldwell said. The union is conducting a poll of its members this month, and will take its cue from the results, he said.
Gore and Hoffa have not met personally since late April, Caldwell said. But Gore and Teamsters staff have been in contact at least once a week, he and Gore aides said.
Organized labor has been angry at Gore for his ardent support for free-trade pacts, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and permanently normalized trade status with China. Union leaders argue that expanding free trade will undermine American workers and benefit operations in foreign nations where they say wages are low and environmental standards are lax.
But Republicans have also backed the trade bills, and Democrats hope that union leaders will ultimately realize they are better off, overall, with Gore than with Bush.
''I've noticed what everyone else has noticed, which is this playful repartee between unions and Nader,'' said Representative Jose Serrano, Democrat of New York, who is a longtime labor advocate. ''I can't see how they could go anywhere else'' but to the Democrats, who have been ''nice to them,'' he said.
''If at this point, labor doesn't realize that the Democrats are their friends, then the problem is bigger than this election,'' Serrano said.
Earlier in the day, Gore and Lieberman wooed an overwhelmingly female audience at a doll factory here, promising to fight for equal pay and abortion rights even as they lauded the importance of faith, family, and promoting ''the moral center'' of America.
The two men praised their wives, their daughters and their mothers, whom Lieberman described as ''strong women.''
''We know that too many women ... still go to work every day worried sick about their kids,'' either because they don't have adequate child care or health care, Lieberman told a group of about 100 women at the Little Souls, Inc. dollmaker.
''For working women, the challenge to balance work and family is often an especially hard struggle,'' Gore said, as a baby in the crowd wailed in its mother's arms.
But Gore was careful also to include stay-at-home parents in his appeal.''For those who decide they wish to have either the mother or father stay at home longer after the baby is born, they ought to get financial help too,'' Gore said. ''They ought to get tax relief.''
