Love's labor lost on critics_But those involved praise cooperation

 What do Philadelphia's mayoral candidates think of the Redesigning Government collaborative between labor and management?

Ironically, it's the Republican who likes it.

The program has spawned labor/management committees throughout the government, but most won't achieve much if the next mayor decides to jettison it and ramp up privatization again.

Republican candidate Sam Katz has taken an active interest in the idea, sending issues director Linda Morrison to a conference on labor-management cooperation in Baltimore.

"I'm quite positive," Katz said in an interview. "Though I may have been skeptical about this at first, Linda is a pretty tough customer and she's spoken to a number of cities around the country where they've developed this over time with tangible and documented impact."

This is not a new role for Morrison, who worked in Mayor Rendell's administration during the first term, pushing privatization.

"There needs to be a concerted effort to expand it every year," Katz said of the Redesigning Government Initiative. But Katz, who has said he wants steeper tax cuts than Rendell has planned, cautioned that he will not rule out privatization.

"I'm not taking that off the table," Katz said, "but it's not about privatization. It's about making sure taxpayers get value for their money. There may be cases where doing things dramatically different through contracting out have to be considered, but I would not do that until changes through cooperation and collaboration have been exhausted."

Democrat John Street's campaign has contacted the Redesigning Government team and gathered materials, but the idea doesn't appear to loom large in Street's vision.

Street sent the Daily News a written statement on privatization in response to a request for comment on this story, saying the city work force should perform core services while allowing for contracting out in some circumstances.

Street has a complex history with the municipal unions.

In 1988, he intervened as a Council leader to thwart the Goode administration's move toward exploring privatized trash collection.

But he was a close partner with Mayor Rendell in fashioning the 1992 labor agreements that unions regard as a bitter defeat, and many union leaders still resent his role.

Wayne Johnson of AFSCME District Council 33, the blue collar workers union, said he's prepared to work with whomever the voters send him.

"There's a realization among our members that John Street was on the side of the Rendell administration, but I don't hold him altogether responsible for that," Johnson said. "I just hope that whoever becomes mayor will think about what was done in the past and look for other avenues to work this out."