Senate contenders race for unions’ backing

Coakley’s spate of early union endorsements was a factor in the decision of US Representative Stephen F. Lynch, a former ironworkers union leader, not to enter the race.

Capuano, meanwhile, has responded with a string of labor endorsements of his own, and they represent more workers than the unions behind Coakley.

“Special elections always play to our strength,’’ said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, which represents about 400,000 labor union members and has yet to endorse in the race. “We can organize our workforce, contact our membership, provide phone banks and literature on the job, knock on doors, and do mailings - and do each multiple times.’’

Stephen Pagliuca and Alan Khazei, the other Democrats running in the Dec. 8 primary, have not been a factor in the tussle for labor backing.

Coakley’s union strength is based in the building trades and in the transportation and hospitality industries, because of her aggressive enforcement of the state’s wage laws, a lesser priority for her predecessors. Her office issues news releases at a rate of almost one a week, announcing charges or settlements with companies engaged in fraudulent employment practices, such as misclassifying employees as independent contractors or failing to contribute to insurance for unemployment and workers’ compensation.

Capuano’s voting record in Congress has earned him a 97 percent career rating from the AFL-CIO, and his labor support cuts across several industries, in part because he has voted against most of the United States’ trade agreements with other nations. Manufacturing and industrial-sector unions say those agreements place American workers at a competitive disadvantage because of cheap labor in countries such as Mexico and China.

“Coakley gets great credit with the building trades for being much better on [wage and hour law enforcement], but she doesn’t have all the building trades, and Capuano has experience in broader issues that come before Congress,’’ Haynes said.

Universal health care is at the top of every labor union’s agenda, he said, along with the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill before Congress that would make it possible for workers to organize a union without a secret-ballot election.

The state AFL-CIO will decide, probably late this month, whether to endorse anyone in the Democratic primary. An endorsement is far from certain, however, because the labor split now emerging in the endorsements of various locals and statewide councils of individual unions may make it difficult for either candidate to obtain the support of two-thirds of the AFL-CIO’s 65-member executive council. The blessing of the AFL-CIO is not a guarantee of victory in a Democratic primary, either.

Two of the top individual labor prizes will complete their endorsement reviews as early as next week - the state council of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 75,000 workers, and the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which has nearly 100,000 active members.

The muscular SEIU, with most of its members in the health care and social service industries, is increasingly a major political player, delivering campaign workers and financial support to candidates it backs.

But an endorsement by four of the five locals in the state is required for an endorsement by the state council, said Harris Gruman, executive director of the state council.

Besides health care, SEIU priorities include pension protection and an overhaul of immigration laws, Gruman said. The union, with more than 2 million members nationwide, favors federal legislation to create a path to “earned legalization’’ status for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. The union also retains the right to make “a unified non-endorsement or release people so that the locals can make their own endorsements,’’ Gruman said.

The teachers association, which is not affiliated with the AFL-CIO, requires a simple majority of its 23-member candidate recommendation committee, MTA president Anne Wass said.

“If we do wind up recommending somebody, we would definitely be communicating with our own members,’’ Wass said. But because this is a federal election, she said, any public advertising on behalf of a candidate would have to be paid for by the federal political action committee of the National Education Association, the umbrella organization of the state affiliates.

The unions that have already taken sides are providing volunteers to do sign-holding, gather signatures, and make phone calls.

Endorsements are helpful, but organized labor is not monolithic, and union leaders have never been able to deliver their members en masse to a particular candidate.

The support for Coakley and Capuano reflects not only divisions by industry but also within individual unions.

For example, Coakley has been endorsed by nine of the 10 Teamsters locals in the state, representing 21,800 workers, while the Capuano has the backing of the other Teamsters local, with 800 members. Unite Here’s Local 26 in Boston, with 6,300 hotel and restaurant workers, is supporting Coakley, but Unite Here’s New England Joint Board, representing about 6,000 workers, mostly in the needle trades, is backing Capuano. Coakley has picked up the endorsement of Dorchester-based Local 103 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, with its 6,000 members, but five other IBEW locals, with a total of 8,000 members, have endorsed Capuano.

Coakley’s other major labor endorsements include the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, with 10,785 members; the 5,400-member Local 6 of the Office & Professional Employees; and the Painters & Allied Trades Council 35, with 3,100 members.

Capuano’s other key endorsers are United Food and Commercial Workers locals, with a combined 40,000 members; Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts, 12,000 members; and the 2,750-member Local 3 of the bricklayers union, based in Charlestown.

Each candidate has also picked up support from nonunion groups that advocate on behalf of worker groups, active or retired. Capuano has been endorsed by the 62,000-member Retired State, County, and Municipal Employees Association, and Coakley has the backing of the 22,000-member Massachusetts Police Association.

Coakley’s vigorous enforcement of wage and hour laws may be paying political dividends now, but it also resulted in the cancellation last year of a University of Massachusetts at Lowell plan to lease additional dormitory space from a private developer selected from among a dozen proposals. The school, which is trying to increase its residential student body, has in the past put students up in a Nashua hotel.

When a losing bidder protested, Coakley ruled that the project, which involved privately funded new construction and a long-term public lease, was subject to state bidding laws, meaning workers would have to be paid the equivalent of a union wage.

That would have increased costs on the $20 million project by 38 percent, which would have been passed along to students in the form of higher room fees.

Coakley, in an interview this week, said the build-and-lease arrangement constituted “an end run’’ around state bidding laws and could start a pattern if allowed to stand.

The developer appealed Coakley’s decision, however, and in March, a Superior Court judge ruled that Coakley had erred. The attorney general’s office has appealed that decision to the state Appeals Court, where the case, which could set a precedent one way or the other, is pending.

Brian C. Mooney can be reached at bmooney@globe.com.