The New York Times, December 21, 2004, Tuesday

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

December 21, 2004 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section B; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk; PUBLIC LIVES; Pg. 2

HEADLINE: A Voice for Labor, Deftly Applied

BYLINE: By ROBIN FINN

BODY:
SURE, Denis M. Hughes considered behaving like a stereotypical labor czar and throwing a fit last summer when his chronic ideological sparring partner, Gov. George E. Pataki, bestowed a courtesy call confirming his imminent veto of a raise of the state's minimum wage. He was outraged. This was legislation he had spent two years shepherding. But the tantrum is not his modus operandi.
Mr. Hughes, an electrician-turned-president of the New York State A.F.L.-C.I.O., has a leprechaun's physique and a diplomat's temperament. Wry understatement is his best weapon. So he quietly told Mr. Pataki he was disappointed, hung up and got cracking on a Senate override. It worked.
The minimum wage is to rise in January, and again in 2006 and 2007. Mr. Hughes, 54, is not gloating. That would be bad for labor's image, something he's evangelical about improving. Anyhow, at 5 feet 8 inches, gravity-defying hairline included, boorishness is a physical impossibility. Rants and raves aren't an option. And corruption? Not winked at on his watch: At the last A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention, he sponsored an ethics resolution as proof.
None of this is accidental. Neither is the presence of what seems an out-of-context photograph, of Fidel Castro taking batting practice, amid the otherwise on-message decor, like George Meany's desk and a pictorial homage to Gov. Al Smith, in his office on Lower Broadway.
''I keep Fidel here to remind me of the absurd nature of absolute power,'' says Mr. Hughes, carefully sipping hot coffee from a paper cup. ''There he is, in his best fatigues, interrupting a professional ball game just because he can.''
''Absolute power is something I'll never have,'' he observes, not unhappily. ''What I do is borrow power from the people who have it, and use it for the common good. That's the greatest thing about this job: no moral conflicts.''
His definition of the common good is progressive legislation tailored to lighten the load of people low on the economic scale. A timely example is the Dec. 6 legislation raising the state's minimum wage to $7.15 an hour by 2007, from $5.15.
These days Mr. Hughes lives comfortably and gratefully in what he considers maximum-wage territory, making $160,000, wearing nice suits and traversing the state in a union-leased Buick. But he recalls starting out as an electrician's apprentice in the late 60's, earning $2.25 an hour. Fresh from the Navy, he lived with his parents on Staten Island. He had to, even after he got his first union raise, to $2.75.
''There's nothing like a raise in pay to increase your dignity,'' he says, though he's not campaigning for one. ''To me, $160,000 is plenty.'' His salary enabled him to send his daughter to Fordham and lets him dabble in a lifelong indulgence, motorcycles. He exercises his orange Harley Sportster on weekends with a pack of electrician pals but is not, nor was he ever, a Hell's Angel: ''I don't think I'd pass the initiation.'' Insufficient flamboyance.
Mr. Hughes does not achieve his desired legislative results by throwing his weight around. He doesn't weigh enough, not even with a union membership of 2.5 million, the largest in the nation, for ballast. To compensate, he has become a deft and tenacious coalition builder, and consequently a behind-the-scenes arm-twister of Albany's lawmakers since being elected union president in 1999. His role model for tenacity, the baseball slugger Hank Greenberg, occupies wall space right below his antihero, Mr. Castro.
''Hank Greenberg was tough, and toughness is something I need very badly in this job,'' he says. ''Labor legislation is in jeopardy, and we needed this minimum wage to re-establish the precedent for legislation that speaks to the needs of working men and women.''
THAT the 700,000 minimum wage earners affected by it tend to be non-A.F.L.-C.I.O. members is beside the point. An economic ripple effect is the point.
''That's kind of the beauty of the whole thing,'' he says, ''that by doing something for people outside of organized labor, we've given ourselves a chance to provide a wage floor, a basement level so to speak. That's the self-serving side of it. Working the fight for a minimum wage was a good thing.
''We're issue-oriented, and we exploit political situations for the public good. I can't be partisan. The whole reason for doing this is to get progressive legislation passed.''
About his rift with the governor: ''I can't take it personally. I can't be unpleasant.''
Mr. Hughes grew up in a thoroughly unionized Irish-Italian clan. One grandfather was a boilermaker, the other a carpenter. His father worked for the Department of Sanitation, his mother was a keypunch operator and his uncles were pipe fitters and carpenters.
He chose electronics because, of all the building trades, it struck him as one with ''more thinking and less lifting.''
''In my neighborhood,'' he said, ''being in a union was considered a major economic move. Getting into the electricians' union was like being accepted at an Ivy League college.''
Not that Mr. Hughes, who lives with his wife in Rockland County, ignored college. Over 20 years, he accumulated a patchwork of credits from Empire State College, City University of New York, and Cornell, enough to receive a bachelor's degree in industrial labor relations.
He worked his last on-site job, as a project manager at Pier 17 in 1985, the year he joined the union's administration as its political director and assistant to the president. But he'd still be penciling in ''electrician'' as his occupation on his tax return if his accountant hadn't made him switch to ''labor leader.'' He didn't argue.