The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

JIM LEHRER: Good evening on this Labor Day evening. The news today was mostly politics as candidates Reagan and Bush, Mondale and Ferraro began the official hunt for votes and each other. Also, space shuttle Discovery developed problems with icicles, but nothing serious. And Israel has new problems over forming a new government, which may be serious. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: Two of our in-depth stories on the NewsHour this Labor Day look at two dilemmas facing the labor movement. First, labor and the election. Representatives of a union backing Reagan and another backing Mondale debate labor's divided view of presidential politics. Then some steelworkers and two economists talk about job-skidding -- workers who have lost their middle-class status.Then Judy Woodruff reports on the candidates and the issues in Canada's election tomorrow. And essayist Alan Lupo has some thoughts on the complications of going to the moview today.

LEHRER: The final 60-day clock started running on the 1984 presidential elections today. That's because it's Labor Day, and tradition says that's when both the candidates and the voters begin to get serious. For President Reagan, way ahead in the polls, it meant the release of an official Labor Day message, and then campaign appearances in California, his old political stomping grounds.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: Building prosperity and maintaining our strength also permit us to keep our strong values -- faith, work, family, neighborhood, freedom and peace. And those are not just words.They're expressions of what America means, definitions of what makes us a good and loving people. We must do more than talk about these values. We must restore them and protect them against challenge. And we must use our resources in and out of government to allow our historic values to enrich the lives of all who follow us, allowing our faith to be heard and to be felt, infusing our schools with the finest of quality, giving law enforcement all the tools they need to fight crime and drugs, and never limiting the opportunities for any American. All those belong to the future that we will build.

LEHRER: The other half of the ticket, Vice President Bush, was off on his campaign own in Illinois and New Orleans, and at a news conference outside Chicago he said Walter Mondale sounds a bit desperate with his attacks on President Reagan over religion. Robin?

MacNEIL: Democratic candidate Mondale and his running mate Geraldine Ferraro also treated today as the formal start to their campaign, although both have been campaigning for several weeks. They arranged coast-to-coast appearances, starting at New York's traditional Labor Day parade, flying to a rally in Wisconsin and on to an appearance in California. Crowds were sparse when Mondale and Ferraro joined the parade up New York's Fifth Avenue while Mondale-Ferraro posters lines the route. The candidates marched with AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland andNew York Governor Mario Cuomo. They greeted local labor officials, but did not address the crowd. Although there were sizeable crowds at the beginning of the parade, at many points along the way participants appeared to outnumber spectators. Mondale aides said the thin crowd was due to the early start of the parade. From New York Mondale and Ferraro flew to Merrill, Wisconsin, for a better-attended Labor Day rally, where both made speeches attacking Ronald Reagan.

WALTER MONDALE, Democratic presidential candidate: Today the campaign for 1984 begins. Dozens of issues will be discussed. But before the confetti becomes a blizzard, I want to tell you what I believe this race is all about. It comes down to this: in this election we will decide what kind of people we are. And let me tell you what I mean. Today there are 50,000 nuclear warheads on this planet. One false move and human history is over. What kind of people are we? Well, we're a strong country and we defend our freedom. But we're also a smart country that knows that those god-awful weapons must never go off. On November 6th -- on November 6th, pick a president who knows that.

MacNEIL: Ms. Ferraro attacked what she called the self-conscious patriotism that is made on Madison Avenue and that the Republicans had staged at their Dallas convention. She added, "When someone finds jobs for the 8 1/2 million jobless in America, that will be a patriotic act. When we finally stop the nuclear arms race, that will be a patriotic act." Jim? Labor's Choice: A Labor Day Debate

LEHRER: The mix of Labor Day and elections is a natural one, for reasons beyond the calendar, and at that parade in New York City today we sampled some opinions about the 1984 mix.

1st CITIZEN: The labor union is people, hard-working people, and Mondale is definitely for the working people. And we need a man like Mondale.

2nd CITIZEN: Well, it looks like a Mondale-Ferraro parade. I'm so excited, because I just was walking into Lord & Taylor and I'm seeing that this parade is all about the election. And I didn't think that we had this kind of support from the unions. So I'm excited.

3rd CITIZEN: I don't see much of a chance right now for Walter Mondale. I think people are willing to give Ronald Reagan another four years to try out what he said. I think he needs another four years, and I'm willing to give him that.

4th CITIZEN: I know I haven't had a chance with Reagan, so I'll definitely try Mondale.

REPORTER: What do you mean, you haven't had a chance with Reagan?

4th CITIZEN: Well, everything has gone sky-high -- not according to his statistics and his figures and all. I'm aware of what you can do with figures. And I don't feel that it did me any good in the four years that he's been here.

5th CITIZEN: Both my wife and I were Democrats, but we're going to definitely vote for Reagan.

REPORTER: What do you do?

5th CITIZEN: Computer operations.

REPORTER: Are you in a union then?

5th CITIZEN: No. I don't even believe in unions.

REPORTER: Why is that?

5th CITIZEN: They breed complacency.

6th CITIZEN: A lot of people are getting the benefits of what unions have done who don't realize it. If there weren't the threat of unions, a lot of people wouldn't be getting what they're getting.

7th CITIZEN: To me Mondale being a big supporter of labor unions is a negative, not a positive.

8th CITIZEN: Union's for Mondale, but I got to make up my own mind. I got to evaluate things. You just don't -- you don't let somebody else do your own thinking for you.

LEHRER:Officially, most of organized labor is steadfast and solid for Mondale.The AFL-CIO endorsed him and worked for him even before he was nominated. The only major union supporting Reagan is the Teamsters. But labor leaders and politicians found out many times there can be a large jump between endorsements and votes. In 1980, for instance, Reagan-Bush won more than 40% of the union vote, despite almost unanimous labor endorsement for Carter-Mondale. How will it go this time? There's no way to know, of course. But there is a way to sample the arguments that will be heard within labor's ranks over the next 60 days. We do it now with Edward Carlough, president of the AFL-CIO Sheet Metal Workers Union, and Paul Locigno, government affairs director for the Teamsters.

Mr. Locigno, why does President Reagan rate support from union members and working people?

PAUL LOCIGNO: Well, Jim, first of all, I only can speak for our union, and I believe President Reagan not only rates the support of this union but actively will have support of the rank and file because, number one, he has kept his commitments on the economy, especially with eliminating double-digit inflation and lower interest rates, and we have just conducted a presidential poll by our membership, and by almost an 11% margin our rank and file members prefer President Reagan over Candidate Mondale.

LEHRER: Why does Walter Mondale deserve the support, Mr. Carlough?

EDWARD CARLOUGH: Well, Mr. Lehrer, our union's been a very independent union. We were not one of those that supported the pre-endorsement movement for Mondale. We didn't support Jimmy Carter in '76 in terms of endorsement. We didn't support him in 1980. We were looking for alternatives. We did vote for Jimmy Carter, but we didn't officially endorse him. Four more years of Ronald Reagan is just too much. There are a lot of people who should be very happy -- I don't know how many Teamsters are millionaires, Paul, but there were 70,000 new millionaires made under Ronald Reagan the last three years. The average working man and woman is not doing very well under this administration. And in terms of the thing that vitally affects our union, automobile workers and the steelworkers, budget deficits, high interest rates, this president will have accumulated a greater budget deficit by next year, if he's re-elected, than every president since George Washington onward, up to and including Jimmy Carter. We don't think that's a very conservative president. Frankly, I think he's a very radical person in the way he's handled the economy. We believe Mondale-Ferraro will do much better.

LEHRER: How do you answer that?

Mr. LOCIGNO: Well, Jim, since Ed brought up the auto industry, let's speak on the auto industry. When President Reagan was inaugurated, that very day unemployment in the auto industry was reaching 19%, and right now it's been cut down to less than 7%. Also at the time he was inaugurated, 193,000 UAW members were out of work, and I believe that that figure is down to less than 60,000. So I think, you know, if you ask those auto workers that are working again and their dollar's worth more and they can spend more with the same dollar in the supermarket, I think that's your answer.

LEHRER: That's a tough argument, Mr. Carlough.

Mr. CARLOUGH: Well, I'd like to hear the autoworkers make the rejoinder. I've heard it many times. Owen Bieder, the president of the UAW, is very eloquent on this matter. The fact of the matter is that even the automobile recovery -- and, incidentally, when the President took over, automobile unemployment was here; he pushed it up to here, and now he's dropped it back to here, so it's pretty close to where it was when he first took office. But even that --

LEHRER: In other words, you're saying that the unemployment --

Mr. CARLOUGH: It's a rollercoaster -- he's now at the low end of the rollercoaster that he started in terms of unemployment when he became president of the United States.

LEHRER: Do you dispute that --

Mr. CARLOUGH: But even in terms of automobile workers --

LEHRER: Wait a minute.

Mr. LOCIGNO: Absolutely, Jim. As I previously stated, I gave you the straight statistical information at the time the President was sworn in -- what the unemployment ratio was in the auto industry and the number of UAW people out of work.

Mr. CARLOUGH: We have an overvalued dollar. We've been selling automobiles. Once the budget deficits -- if they continue to go the way they are going, the automobile industry, the steel industry, the construction industry, most American industries are threatened, and we just think that the President's policies are radical. We're looking for a moderate --

LEHRER: Wait a minute. What do you mean, radical?

Mr. CARLOUGH: Radical in terms of -- we didn't have these budget deficits because of the threat of war, because of fire or pestilence or any of these reasons why a government normally has to spend great sums of money in a short period of time.We had it during a relatively normal peacetime situation because the President believes in these kind of economic policies.

Mr. LOCIGNO: Jim, first of all, I don't believe any of the President's policies are radical, far from it. I think prior to his administration, to use a quote from Jimmy Carter -- and I would also like to underscore here, Jimmy Carter said that no other vice president was more advised and attuned on the decision-making process as Fritz Mondale was, that he -- "there was a malaysia [sic] with the American people." There was nothing wrong with the American people. The only thing that was wrong with this country was the administration, and I think that President Reagan, besides making the economic situation better for people to provide for their children and go to college and food, and our retireees, they have a higher dollar value for their fixed-income purchasing power, has made Americans proud to be Americans again.

Mr. CARLOUGH: Provide for children to go to college? You don't have college scholarship loans any more under President Reagan.And, in terms of the retirees. I travel quite a bit around. We have membership in 50 states and in 10 provinces of Canada. Mr. Lehrer, I travel this country. And I talk to a lot of our retired members. They and their wives are just scared to death. Not merely the Social Security system and the way it's going under President Reagan, but the fact of rising medical costs; they can't keep up with them. Their life is very unstable, and they're looking for a different direction in this country, and I honestly believe that Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, who's an exciting addition to the ticket, are the kind of moderate viewpoint that sheet metal workers and all union members are looking for, and they care. And we can have trust in them. Their are imperfections in everyone in life, but when we look at the alternatives, we're going to be very proud to support Mondale and Ferraro.

LEHRER: You say, though, that the basic theme question that the President and Vice President Bush are asking is, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" You think that will win it for them. Is that correct?

Mr. LOCIGNO: I think that's still going to be the same question that was asked in 1980, and I think when the voters go in the voter box, no matter if you belong to a union or the Elks Club or the PTA or whatover denomination, they're going to vote their pocketbooks, Jim.

LEHRER: Mr. Carlough --

Mr. CARLOUGH: That's one question that they're going to consider.

Mr. LEHRER: All right, what about --

Mr. CARLOUGH: Reagan said, "Are they better off than they were four years ago?" and I think they're going to consider another question.

LEHRER: What's that?

Mr. CARLOUGH: They're going to look at their children and they're going to look at those of us have grandchildren, and they're going to say, "What is the future like in this country, and in whose hands are we better off?" and they're going to come down again on Mondale and Ferraro.

LEHRER: Does the Ferraro nomination or selection affect the vote among your membership at all?

Mr. LOCIGNO: In what respect, Jim? You mean as far as being the first woman --

LEHRER: Yeah. I mean, do you see any Teamsters members gong for or against the Democratic ticket because of her?

Mr. LOCIGNO: I think that'll be true of any special interest group, no matter what it is. I think that, you know, because it is a first time there is going to be some interest and there's going to be some people voting on that basis. And on the other hand, there is going to be some people voting against it for the very same reason.

LEHRER: You don't see it as a big thing, though?

Mr. LOCIGNO: No, not at all.

Mr. CARLOUGH: We have a wife of one of our organizers in North Carolina, Mr. Lehrer. She's 57 years of age. The first time she ever registered to vote -- she's one of those persons who's been turned off in this country. You know, half the people who are eligible don't vote in this country. The first time she ever registered to vote was the day after Geraldine Ferraro was named as the vice presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in San Francisco. I think there are a lot of Mrs. Fries throughout the United States, and they're going to go to the polls and they're going to vote for the ticket.

LEHRER: Let me ask you, finally, gentlemen, each of you, do you think the Teamsters Union endorsement is going to mean that much to the Teamsters members themselves?

Mr. LOCIGNO: I think the Teamsters endorsement is going to be much more than just to the members of the Teamsters Union. I think you'll have the same phenomenon that you had in 1980, where you have a lot of rank and file, AFL affiliates and officers, who didn't agree with their leadership and didn't agree that they couldn't make the selection or have a poll of the rank and file, as the Teamsters did in a democratic way, and I think that it'll legitimize the blue-collar worker again for voting for President Reagan.

LEHRER: How do you see the impact of this endorsement?

Mr. CARLOUGH: I have a lot of good friends in the Teamsters Union; I have a great respect for them. But the Teamster leadership is going to find out what John L. Lewis found out in 1940. The miners respected him, they loved him, he did a great job for them. But when he attempted to move the miners away from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the miners marched to their own tune. Our members are independent, too. They're going to march to their own tune. We believe they're so independent and they're so smart and they're so tough, the tune they're going to march to is Fritz Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro on November 6th, and we're going to have a better country, Mr. Lehrer.

LEHRER: Gentlemen, thank you both very much.

Mr. LOCIGNO: Thank you very much.

LEHRER: Robin?

Mr. CARLOUGH: Thank you The Pittsburgh Story

MacNEIL: Although the jobless picture is brighter now than it has been in several years, major employment worries persist. One particular issue concerns thousands of middle-class manufacturing workers who lost their jobs during the height of the recession two years ago.To find out how some of these people are faring, we recently traveled to Pittsburgh, and Kwame Holman has this report.

KWAME HOLMAN [voice-over]: For decades, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been known as a blue-collar town. The steel mills that line its rivers have provided jobs for generations of men and women. During the 1982 recession, 50,000 steelworkers, half of all the steelworkers in the area, were laid off. But now that the nation is in recovery, what has happened to those 50,000 laid-off steelworkers? Are they participating in the economic upswing? Jay Weinberg worked in a steel mill for eight years. He was laid off in 1982.

JAY WEINBERG, former steelworker: According to statistics, I'm employed, but when you look at it I earn $3.35 an hour at the one job, and it's three hours in the evening.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: That job, combined with a job at a state liquor store, pays him only one-fourth of what he earned in the mill.

Mr. WEINBERG: As most jobs around here that are available, they're minimum wage with no benefits. These aren't career-type jobs. These are get-by type jobs. These are the kind of jobs that, you know, they put food on the table.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Former steelworker Bob Hyslop and his wife Christy also had to survive on a minimum-wage salary for the last year.

BOB HYSLOP, former steelworker: It's hard to imagine the psychological strain of being used to be making top wages and then suddenly find yourself pushing burgers for minimum wage and just watching the whole world passing you by whenever you thought that you were up there in the world. You were middle-class America; you pay your taxes, you pay your bills. And then suddenly there you are. You're stuck.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Most of the former steelworkers we met who had jobs had jobs with low pay and no benefits, jobs with little future. They worked for minimum wages and convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.

CHRISTY HYSLOP: I look at the world a lot differently than I did before this happened. I look at people differently because I always thought I'd have plenty. I'd be on the top looking down, while we were down on the bottom looking up, and boy, it's different.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: But what really frustrates the Weinbergs and the Hyslops are the TV news reports of improved unemployment statistics suggesting that the jobless have recovered. But former steelworkers don't count a minimum-wage job as economic recovery.

Mr. WEINBERG: I mean, those are the type of statistics that they keep throwing at you, and the anchorperson smiles and says, "Everything's wonderful in America now." and I just -- I don't understand it.

Mr. HYSLOP: It's an insult.

Ms. HYSLOP: It's an insult to your intelligence.

Mr. HYSLOP: It's an insult to your intelligence that they would report things like that and make you think that things are just going along just fine.

[making insurance contact] This is Bob from American General. You told me to call before I came today, and I was wondering, will some time around 1:30 to 2:00 be all right?

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Recently Bob Hyslop managed to find a new job, as an insurance salesman. He collects payments due on old policies and tries to sell new ones, but he still earns only half of what he made in the mill, and he resents being seen as a success story.

Mr. HYSLOP: Starting out, I'm not making anywhere near the same amount of money.

Ms. HYSLOP: But now, since he's got this job, they think, "Whew! Boy, that was -- it's over now, and they'll be okay now," and that's not true. We have a long way to go.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: One possible way to help make Pittsburgh's unemployed part of the economic recovery is to retrain them. Three organizations, the Mellon Bank, a community college and the federal government, have joined together to retrain 48 unemployed adults for new jobs in financial institutions. One problem: even retrained workers often have trouble finding work and end up in minimum-wage jobs.

Mr. WEINBERG: They tell you to go out and retrain as a computer programmer or something, and I know a lot of steelworkers that did that, and they're sitting there working in hamburger joints because that's not the solution for the future.

Mr. HYSLOP: I'm age 32 years old, and I want to retrain for a job. All well and good. I have two kids. What's going to happen to my mortgage? How am I going to feed my kids while I'm going to school to learn a new trade? I can't afford to go to school to learn a new trade. I have to go work. I don't have time to go to school.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Bob and Christy Hyslop thought they had done everything right to obtain the American dream. They had saved money from their steelworker earnings for seven years before having children. They had bought a small first home in the suburbs. Now they feel betrayed.

Mr. HYSLOP: You're taught from the time that you enter grade school that you can achieve the American dream. That's not true. The door is closed.

Ms. HYSLOP: The middle class, I believe, is going to be non-existent. You're going to have the guys at the top and the guys at the bottom, and we're the guys at the bottom. They don't want to see you on the beach next to them. They don't want to see that. They don't want to see your nice house with a couple of cars out in the driveway. That's not good. Job Slipping: What Kind of Work?

MacNEIL: The bitterness expressed by that woman, Christy Hyslop, over the worsening financial condition of middle-class families like hers brings us to our next major discussion. A growing number of economists believe fewer permanent jobs which pay middle-class wages are being created and that the living standards of many Americans are falling. One leading economist who feels that way is Barry Bluestone, a professor of economics and director of the Social Welfare Research Institute of Boston College. He's presently conducting a major survey of laid-off auto workers in the Detroit area, and he joins us from public station WGBH in Boston. An economist with a sharply different view is Robert Ortner, chief economist with the Commerce Department, and he's in Washington this evening.

Professor Bluestone, first of all, what lessons do you draw from the experience of people like the Hyslops whom we've just seen? How typical are they, and what do they represent, in your view?

BARRY BLUESTONE: Well, Robin, in many parts of the country the kinds of stories you've just seen are rampant. Certainly that's true in the industrial Midwest. It's certainly true in parts of the South where you have an industrial base. It's even true out in California. What we've been doing in the state of Michigan is looking at auto workers at GM, Ford and Chrysler and also at parts plants, and seeing what's happened to them. And what we've found is that the stories that you've just seen, those one, two or three stories, in fact are replicated over and over again. The average auto worker that we've looked at so far has lost between a quarter and one-third of their earnings. But more than that -- and I think this is really important -- is that over 40% have lost their entire savings. So they have no safety net the next time the auto industry has a downturn. Over 25% have no health insurance. So the first accident or the first illness in a family can cause economic disaster. This isnot a story of just one or two people. This is a story that's affecting millions of people across the country, of course concentrated in the industrial Midwest and areas that have an industrial base.

MacNEIL: Affecting millions of people?

Prof. BLUESTONE: Yes. We probably have millions of people when you count the families of the workers who are affected here. Even with the boom in the auto industry, with over 90% of capacity being utilized, there are approximately 170,000 workers in the auto industry who haven't been recalled. Instead, GM, Ford and Chrysler are putting a lot of overtime into their plants rather than rehiring these workers. All of those workers plus their families, of course, are being affected in the way we just saw on your show.

MacNEIL: You just heard Mrs. Hyslop saying that the middle class is going to be nonexistent, and you've recently written something to this effect yourself. What generalization do you make from this situation?

Prof. BLUESTONE: Well, we've been looking at numbers, projections done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics through the year 1995. If you go back to 1969, you'll find that less than half of all jobs were in industries that had had an average wage of $13,500 or less in 1980 dollars. Between 1969 and 1982, however, two-thirds of all the new jobs that were created paid that little. The reason for that is that many of these jobs are part-time jobs, and of course many of them are in the service industries, which are the industries fastest growing in the country, which generally pay much lower wages.

MacNEIL: Mr. Ortner, what is your comment on this?

ROBERT ORTNER: Well, Robin, I think that, listening to the comments that Mr. Bluestone made, that it sounds like our economy is in a depression or something like that. And nothing could be further from the truth. We are going through right now the strongest business expansion that we have had in the postwar period, and obviously this is supported by the statistics -- gross national product, industrial production. Of course, those are just statistics. The most important factor of all, which I'm glad to comment on today, is in jobs.During the last 20 months this economy has created 6 1/2 million new jobs. Mr. Bluestone commented about employmebt in the automobile industry and that it is still down.Of course, the big problem in our economy occurred back in 1979, when we let inflation get out of control. At that point we had over a million jobs in the auto industry. By 1981 that was down under 800,000. Most of the loss occurred in the late '70s.

MacNEIL: Well, what about --

Mr. ORTNER: Since 1981, we have had an increase in jobs in the auto industry of 140,000. But that's not the whole story. There are always shifts going on in this economy, and we have employment growing rapidly in other areas, yes, in services. Also in other manufacturing sectors.

MacNEIL: Do you not see this as the same trend that Mr. Bluestone does, that --

Mr. ORTNER: It is not a trend at all. I certainly am very sympathetic to the two families that you showed on the show, but there are always families in this country who are between jobs. This is a dynamic society. It's a dynamic economy, and it is always, shifting from one kind of an industry to another.

MacNEIL: So you believe that the workers we showed are untypical victims and that the economy is continuing to produce new middle-class, high-paying jobs?

Mr. ORTNER: The economy certainly is continuing to produce middle-class jobs. In fact, Mr. Bluestone's own statistics showed that the middle-income group is not shrinking. The only group that shrank in its income and in its size was the upper-income level. And I would be very happy to cite a few statistics of other industries where jobs are expanding very rapidly, like computers, instrumentation, communications equipment, electronics. These are not $3-an-hour jobs. Those jobs pay very close to the auto industry and the steel industry.

MacNEIL: How do you answer that, Professor Bluestone?

Prof. BLUESTONE: Well, Robin, Mr. Ortner's right. We're creating millions of new jobs. The problem is the quality of those jobs. Certainly we're creating jobs in the computer industry and instrumentation and so forth, that are paying decent wages to very highly-skilled workers. But for every one job we create in the computer industry, we're creating many more in the service industry. The fastest-growing jobs, those occupations which will create the largest number of jobs over the next 10 years, are not in the computer field. They're janitors. They're fast food workers. They're people who are working in nursing homes. And these are jobs that pay minimum wage or somewhat below it. So what we're having is an economy in which, yes, indeed, we're creating some decent jobs for the highly skilled worker, but we're creating many more jobs at the low end, and the middle-class jobs that we've had and the workers in those jobs are slipping downward more often than they're slipping upward.

MacNEIL: Mr. Ortner?

Mr. ORTNER: Well, I think that the emphasis on hamburgers and janitorial services is a gross exaggeration, and I think Mr. Bluestone knows that. His own statistics, as I said before, shows that the middle-income group is not shrinking. If we were really shifting from $12-an-hour jobs to $3-an-hour jobs, you would see it in the income statistics in this country. Real wages are growing now. They shrank in the last two years of the Carter administration. Real, disposable, personal income in the last two years is up 11%. It fell during the last two years of the Carter administration.

MacNEIL: Well, let's go back --

Mr. ORTNER: That is based on three factors: new jobs, which is the most important of all; higher wages; and the drop in inflation. Well, I should mention also the cut in taxes, of course, since this is spendable income.

MacNEIL: Well, let's go back to Professor Bluestone on that. If your figures are right, he says, this would show up in the income -- national figures on income, and it doesn't.

Prof. BLUESTONE: Well, the reason why we don't see that happening, of course, is there has been a massive increase in the number of people who are going to work. The way families are maintaining a middle income, if they can, is by sending two, three, four members of the household to work. The very large increase in women's labor force participation to a great extent is responsible for keeping income from falling further. What we have seen, of course, is there has been a recovery. No one's doubting that. But it's a recovery from almost an 11% unemployment rate in the second year of the Reagan administration, and that does show up in some of the statistics. But people are still not doing much better than they were at the beginning of the Reagan administration. The timing has been different. Carter took the last two years of a major recession. Mr. Reagan continued that for the first three years of his administration, and the last 18 months, basically, we've seen some recovery and that's redounding to his benefit, no doubt.

MacNEIL: Do you have a brief final comment, Mr. Ortner?

Mr. ORTNER: Well, yes. That's another exaggeration. Mr. Bluestone said the first three years of the Reagan administration were recession. The 1981 downturn started in the middle of 1981. That was caused by the high inflation and super interest rates that he inherited from the Carter administration, and I think Mr. Bluestone actually knows that.

MacNEIL: We --

Mr. ORTNER: Now that we have inflation down this economy can keep growing and can keep creating the kinds of jobs that we have seen coming through in the last two years.

MacNEIL: I have to thank you both, gentlemen. I think we're going to hear more of this discussion in the future. Thank you both for joining us. Jim?

LEHRER: This Labor Day saw former President Jimmy Carter pick up the laboring tools of a carpenter and being work with 40 other volunteers from Georgia in the New York slums. The former President and Mrs. Carter plan to spend a week at a six-story tenement on the Lower East Side of New York City in a project to renovate the building. Mr. Carter is an expert furniture maker, and he obviously knows how to use a carpenter's tools. The project was organized by Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit organization in Americus, Georgia, near the Carters' home in Plains. The former president worked with Habitat volunteers on a project in Americus last spring, and became involved in this one during a visit to New York in April. During the day he will be in charge of work on the second floor, and at night he will sleep in the men's dormitory in a church nearby. The Carters call it a vacation.

One final piece of labor news, and it's from Great Britain. That country's Trades Union Congress, which represents 10 million workers and 98 unions, voted today to support the striking coal miners. The miners have been off the job for 26 weeks. If that strike continues, and if today's vote translates into sympathy strikes and other action, a major confrontation between labor and the conservative Thatcher government could lie ahead. But observers today were quick to emphasize the word if.

Robin?

MacNEIL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Judy Woodruff has a documentary report on the candidates and the issues in tomorrow's general election in Canada. And essayist Alan Lupo has some thoughts on how a simple part of American life, going to the movies, isn't so simple anymore.

[Video postcard -- New London, Connecticut]

MacNEIL: The White House said today that no employees of the United States government were involved in the crash of an American-made helicopter that was show down in Nicaragua. Other officials said two Americans and one Nicaraguan rebel were killed when the helicopter was shot down after an attack on a Nicaraguan military school. The Nicaraguan government charged that the Americans were CIA agents, but officials in Washington said they were part of a group of volunteers who went to Honduras recently to help the rebels fight in neighboring regions of Nicaragua.

In South Africa, 14 people were killed today during riots in several of the black suburbs of Johannesburg. In the city itself four people were injured by the explosion of a bomb in a government building. The violence marked the day a new constitution went into effect, one that did not include citizenship rights for the black majority.

In Israel, Labor Party leader Shimon Peres said a new election may be needed to resolve a political crisis that has lasted for six weeks. Efforts to form a government of national unity with the right-wing Likud bloc appear to have failed and turned again to the smaller parties in an attempt to put together a majority in Parliament.

Jim?

LEHRER: And there were two major stories from Canada this Labor Day, one tragic, the other political. In Montreal this morning, a bomb exploded at the train station, killing three people and injuring at least 24. The explosion occurred in some lockers as about 150 people waited in line for a train to Ottawa. Police said they did not know who was reponsible.

The political story is about tomorrow's election for prime minister, and Judy Woodruff has that one. Judy? Canada Votes

JUDY WOODRUFF: Jim, Canadians go to the polls tomorrow for what political professionals are predicting could be a landslide for Canada's Conservative Party. After 16 years of leadership by the flamboyant Pierre Elliott Trudeau and his Liberal Party, and Liberal dominance even before that, it would be a huge upheaval in Canadian politics if it happens. What has occurred to bring about the conditions for such a turnaround, especially after John Turner, the man the Liberals chose to replace Prime Minister Trudeau when he resigned a few months ago, started out with such favorable reviews? Producer Gregg Ramshaw and reporter Pat Ellis traveled to Canada to look for some answers first hand, and the results have the makings of a fascinating political drama.

[voice-over] When prime minister John Turner posed with his new cabinet after they were sworn in on June 30th, he and Canada's Liberal Party had turned around the sagging public opinion polls that had brought an end to the political career of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Riding a crest, looking like a shoo-in, comfortably ahead of the Tory opposition. Turner called for snap elections, a short 57-day campaign to capitalize on his lead.

JOHN TURNER, Prime Minister of Canada: Therefore, an election will be held on Tuesday, September 4th, the day after Labor Day.

ALLAN GREGG, Conservative Party pollster: John Turner at the start of this campaign was seen as a man -- he was seen as the incumbent, as the prime minister, someone who was very, very capable, competent, diligent, knowledgeable and having the resolve to bring about the changes the Canadian population desired.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: A political pro, a powerful corporate lawyer, handsome, rich, ambitious, patrician. Some said John Turner had simply been destined to be prime minister someday. But the early pundits weren't reckoning on this man.

BRIAN MULRONEY, Conservative Party candidate for prime minister: By the time the Canadian people get through with the Liberal Party, ain't going to be enough left for a good hand of bridge.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Prime Minister Turner's chief opponet, a leader of the progressive Conservative Party, Brian Mulroney -- equally handsome, equally ambitious, a shrewd labor lawyer who came to head Canada's largest iron ore company; 45 years old, from French-speaking Quebec, he took over the Tory Party and a seat in Parliament just a year ago.

Mr. MULRONEY: I want to particularly welcome the prime minister back from Greece and the cabinet back from Central Nova.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Mulroney is good-humored, easy-going and has the voice of a radio announcer. Canadians say he's good at what they call Main-Streeting, pressing the flesh, in the American politican vernacular.

Mr. MULRONEY: Here's an old guy looking for a vote. That's what I'm doing.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Mulroney has campaigned as the real agent of change in this election, saying only a Conservative government can right the wrongs of Liberal government and change the substance, if not the symbol, of the Trudeau years.

Mr. MULRONEY: Trudeau never looked this good.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Pollsters say Mulroney has gotten his message across.

Mr. MULRONEY: And that's why the Canadian people are going to say no to the Liberals and yes to a brand new progressive Conservative government.

PETER REGENSTREIF, Canadian pollster: The polls now indicate that time for a change and voting Conservative are very closely linked. The time for a change has been there for a long time, and for a period of time Mr. Turner tried to pose as an agent of change, too, by distancing himself from Mr. Trudeau. He apparently was unable to do it.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But more than that, John Turner has been unable to maintain the image of competence and capability he first projected as prime minister. His campaign has been haunted by blunders and gaffes that projected instead the awkwardness of an amateur.

Mr. REGENSTREIF: I've termed Mr. Turner the flypaper candidate. Everything you threw at him stuck.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: With women voters and women's issues playing a growing role in Canadian politics, as they are in the U.S., the prime minister did something observers thought astounding. Canadians call it patting the bum, the backside. In this case the backside of the Liberal Party's chairwoman, Iona Campagnolo. Turner later tried to shrug off the incident -- the friendly instincts, he said, of a tactile politician.

Prime Min. TURNER: I slap a lot of shoulders, hug a lot of people.

REPORTER: What about female behinds?

Prime Min. TURNER: Oh, goodness. I think people are losing their sense of humor.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: When the furor simply wouldn't subside, Turner finally apologized.

KAY SIGURJONSSON, feminist: For women I think it represented a kind of terribly old-fashioned, uninformed attitude about women. So it was that that we were terribly old-fashioned, uninformed attitude about women. So it was that that we were worried about, that there was a kind of 1950s mentality at work in the behavior of our prime minister.

Mr. GREGG: And he didn't handle it well, and it kept on becoming an issue that was nagging him, and it started eroding perceptions of competence and also questions of relevancy, that this guy doesn't understand modern society and that this guy isn't smart enough to cut his losses and get back on his own issues.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But even back on his own issues. Turner stumbled. Trying to distance himself from Trudeau and shore up big business support. Turner prromised better trade relations with the United States. He vowed to fight U.S. quotas on Canadian steel and take the issue personally to President Reagan.

Prime Min. TURNER: And if we don't get this thing solved in a satisfactory way soon, I'm going to be down there to see him eyeball to eyeball.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney had already been invited to meet with Republican conservative Ronald Reagan in the Rose Garden. An unusually warm reception for a government's opposition leader.

Mr. MULRONEY: What the continent needs is another Irishman. We're working on it. We're working on it.

REPORTER: -- that the continent needs another Irishman?

Pres. REAGAN: I agree.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: They also agreed to level with each other on steel quotas, an election-year issue for both men.

Mr. MULRONEY: You best do business when you have firm, straightforward and friendly relations with the people with whom you're doing business. And you don't do business very well by sniping, snarling and scuttling initiatives.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Canada's White House is 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, the official residence of the prime minister. Its occupant must also be a member of Parliament, so each candidate for prime minister must also stand for election in the equivalent of a congressional district, called a "riding" in Canada. In a bit of political bravado. Turner and Mulroney chose to run in districts where their parties traditionally don't do well, apparently trying to cast themselves as national leaders and broaden the base of their parties.

Mr. GREGG: I think both of them went to those respective areas making a very, very calculated risk, understanding both the risk and the calculation; that, over the course of the last four years the population has been relatively volatile.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Again it appears Turner may have miscalculated. He chose a riding in western Canada, in a wealthy suburb of Vancouver, an area where he was raised and attended college, but also a hotbed of rugged Conservatism. Western Canada's Conservatives have time and again rejected the appeals of the Liberals.

REPORTER [at a rodeo]: Those bucking bronco horses make you think of how it's going to be to win in the West?

Prime Min. TURNER: Oh, I think we'll be able to hold on.

REPORTER: How many seconds?

Prime Min. TURNER: Right 'til -- right 'til the horn goes.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Despite some signs of affection, late polls show Turner and the Liberals were not doing well in the West. Mulroney's risk, on the other hand, appeared to be paying off.

Mr. MULRONEY: This is home for me. This is my home. This is where my roots are, and this is why I'm running here.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Conservative Mulroney chose to run in his home riding, in French-speaking Baie Comeau, Quebec. Conservatives rarely win seats in this working class area. The voters prefer the safety-net programs offered by the Liberals. [Mulroney speaking French] Irish by ancestry, Mulroney speaks fluent and colloquial French, a major asset in bilingual Quebec. He played up his native son role, and voter surveys indicated he was likely to lead an unprecedented Conservative resurgence here.

CRAIG OLIVER, Canadian television: Quebequers like him. I think they sense -- well, they no longer have the same commitment to a French Canadian that they had as long as Trudeau was around. They are freed of that commitment, and this is their first chance to vote for the other party without bailing out, without throwing aside their support for one of their own.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Though not without its share of mistakes and misstatements, the Mulroney campaign caravan rolled along. After years out of power, Progressive Conservatives were ready for this election. They had raised money. They had taken over provincial governments. They had built a grassroots power base. Pollster Peter Regenstreif says all this happened while the Liberals took their power for granted.

Mr. REGENSTREIF: The Liberal Party, which re-established itself in power under Mr. Trudeau, was a facade. There is no provincial government now in Canada in the 10 provinces that is Liberal. And that means that there is no political base for the Liberal Party.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Canada's Conservative Party and its candidate draw inevitable comparisons to the Republicans and Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Mr. GREGG: What Brian Mulroney has been able to do is that first he's been able to, I think, strike a responsive chord with the public mood in the same way that Ronald Reagan tapped a lot of that mood of "We can be great again" in the United States with his 1980 campaign.

ED BROADBENT, New Democratic Party candidate for prime minister:

How do you do? Sorry to push you off the sidewalk.

CITIZEN: That's all right. It's very nice to meet you.

Mr. BROADBENT: Very nice to meet you.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Also like the 1980 election here, there is a third party and its candidate to be factored in, the NDP, the ultra-liberal New Democratic Party and its leader, Ed Broadbent. While out of step with the political mainstream today, the NDP has frequently espoused ideas that were later adopted by the Liberal Party.

Mr. BROADBENT: It's fun to be captain of a plane. It would be even more fun to be captain of state.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: An unlikely prospect. Broadbent, polls show, has less than 20% of the popular support. He will be a factor only if Turner or Mulroney fails to win a majority in Parliament and cannot form a governing coalition. Nevertheless, Broadbent compaigned doggedly, attacking his rivals.

Mr. BROADBENT: In John Turner and Brian Mulroney we have the MasterCard and Visa of Canadian politics. They are different on the outside, but they are identical on the inside.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: In fact, Turner and Mulroney did not deviate drastically on the key issues facing Canadians. In televised debates, both promised to improve the economy. Both said they will make Canada a good NATO ally. Out of deference to the United States, both oppose a nuclear freeze. Both said they'll continue expensive social programs. It was only in the closing days of the campaign that they disagreed sharply on the cost of those programs. Each said the other's proposals would cost the people more. Mulroney charged Turner would drive up the deficit.

Mr. MULRONEY: How much higher, Mr. Turner? A billion? Three billion? Four billion?

REPORTER: Mr. Mulroney, when will you open the briefcase, as you put it --

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But for weeks Mulroney had refused to say how much his proposals would cost. A week before the election he announced they would run about $3 billion, much of it raised from projected government savings. Turner lashed back, calling Mulroney a "let's pretend" Liberal for promising to keep existing programs and add more.

ACTRESS WOODRUFF [Turner TV ad]: Excuse me, sir, but can you afford to pay for those promises?

WOOFRUFF [voice-over]: Turner hit Mulroney where polls showed he could be vulnerable.That is, could a traditional Conservative cost-cutter really be trusted to keep social programs?

Prime Min. TURNER: He gave us a carefully crafted speech to deceive. Today's statement in Toronto does nothing to create jobs. It does not even show how he would create jobs. The only job he has given Canadians is a snow job.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But the latest polls showed voters likely to gloss over those differences and vote for the man.

Mr. OLIVER: It's not a beauty contest exactly, but it's something pretty akin to it. Since it's much easier to reach a consensus on the issues in Canada because of the smaller size, because Canadians are pretty satisfied with what they've got and don't want it meddled with, the debate in this campaign at least is not over foreign policy or over domestic issues in any major way. So what does the debate become? It becomes basically, who do you want, Mulroney or Turner?

WOODRUFF: For anyone who wants to match the accuracy of the public opinion polls against the final results of the voting tomorrow, you should keep in mind these figures. A Gallup poll done in the middle of last week showed Mulroney and the Tories leading with 50% of the vote, compared to 28% for Turner and the Liberals and 19% for the New Democrats. As of yesterday, however, Turner was insisting that there was still time left to win the election. Robin?

MacNEIL: Aboard the space shuttle Discovery astronauts and their ground controllers wrestled with a novel problem today. A lump of ice had formed outside the spacecraft, blocking the toilet drain. They tried firing all the shuttle's maneuvering rockets to shake it loose, but that didn't work. They tried turning that side to the sun to melt it off, but that didn't work. They thought about using the spacecraft's mechanical arm to break it off, but didn't try because they couldn't see that part from inside. Controllers were worried that the ice might break off and damage the craft during re-entry on Wednesday. At present it was only an inconvenience, forcing male members of the crew to use plastic bags while chivalrously permitting their female colleague Judy Resnick to use the toilet. Tonight ground controllers were considering sending one astronaut on a space walk to break off the ice.

Jim?

LEHRER: From the eat-your-heart-out news department there is a follow-up to our report last week on the Illinois state lottery, the one that could end up paying a record $40 million to one lucky winner? Well, today that's exactly what happened. That single winner, who gets $2 million a year for 20 years is Michael Wittkowski, a 28-year-old printer from Chicago. He plays the lottery every week with his father, his sister and his brother. He will split the earnings equally with them. Robin?

MacNEIL: Once again the main stories of the day. The Presidential campaign began in earnest with speeches by both candidates on both tickets.

Three people were killed and 24 injured by a bomb explosion in the main railroad station in Montreal.

Fourteen people were killed in rioting in the black suburbs of Johannesburg.

And Israeli Labor Party leader Shimon Peres said it may be necessary to hold a new election to resolve a political crisis that has lasted for six weeks.

Jim?

LEHRER: We close tonight with an essay about the old days, back when movies were called movies. Our essayist is old enough to remember and odd enough to care. He's Alan Lupo, long-time newspaper, television, book and magazine journalist, who has worked and lived in Boston for years, a fact that will be obvious from the way he talks. Summer Films: Where's the Fun?

ALAN LUPO, essayist: Back in the 1940s, when I was growing up, that was our neighborhood movie theater. It's a flooring company now, but back then it was our day care center, our reform school, our playground, our psychiatric counseling clinic, our dream palace. Sixteen cents once a week, and you walked from your house.

Now check this out! This is how we go to the movies in 1980s America. One building with 10 or a dozen theaters, parking lots as big as the Texas Panhandle, and an admission price for a family of four or five that could mean taking out a second mortgage if you want to hit more than a couple of movies a year. Four dollars and 50 cents! You can't do that once a week. Now, for 16", I could forget all the academic pressures of the third grade and disappear into the darkened cavern of my movie theater.

For that same 16" I'd see two feature movies, selected short subjects, a serial, the news of the world, and the ever-popular and enticing previews of coming attractions. And, as added extra attractions, you got to shoot paper clips at the screen, stuff your friend's head under the seat where a quarter-century's worth of gum lay festering, and otherwise do things not allowed in the home or school. I got so excited during one movie that I was yelling and cheering because the American pilots were whacking out Japanese Zeros. I got so excited they threw me out of the movie house.

Today there is no movie house from which they can throw you out. These days such a place is called a cinema. I hate that word, cinema. Sounds like enema, and they don't show movies anymore, either. They show films. Films at the cinema. And you don't get two films, either. You get one. And no newsreel and no serials and no selected short subjects, unless it's one of those artsy-craftsy things that only Ivy League graduates understand. And if you're lucky you get a preview or two of other films being shown elsewhere by that chain that owns this and other cinemas. And, finally, when the feature attraction gets underway, well, you don't get little kids shooting at the screen. No, what you get now are the resident snobs showing off.

You see, a couple of decades or so ago colleges figured out they could make money by offering courses in film, and now we're all paying the price. The cinemas are plagued with pseudo-sophisticated college graduates who begin analyzing the film as soon as it begins, even before the plot starts.

"Well, Muffie, what do you think Producer Placedefazul is trying to achieve? Is this his way of making a personal statement?"

Achieve?! He is trying to achieve a bundle of money is what he is trying to achieve. With this money he can pay the actors, pay the writers, pay the directors, pay the makeup people, maybe even make enough of a profit so he some day can take his family to the cinema. Most filmmakers, like most authors, aren't sending out that many messages. It just makes people feel smart to pretend they see messages where the rest of us see ghosts. [scene from "Ghostbusters"]

Ah, the injustice of it all. Years ago, I, a child waxing patriotic over yet another Allied victory, get thrown out of a moviehouse. Today people who can't shut up during the movie, all the while seeing things in the movie that aren't even there, they get to stay. Hey, I want my 16" back.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.