Laborers were in high spirits at the parade. Later, the District Council 33 president said workers were disappointed with both mayoral candidates. (Ron Cortes / Inquirer Staff Photographer)

Three hours later, inside a campaign office on the 28th floor of a Center City office tower, Republican Sam Katz was making a vow that, if elected mayor, he would negotiate with city workers in an atmosphere of "cooperation, mutual respect and trust."

It was Labor Day, the traditional start of the fall campaign season.

Street, who has been endorsed for mayor by the Philadelphia AFL-CIO council, spoke briefly to several hundred union workers and others who had gathered near JFK Plaza for the start of the city's annual labor parade.

"In November," Street told the crowd, "we're going to wake up and have somebody [as mayor] who understands labor or doesn't. . . . I will be a mayor who represents the working-class interests of this city."

Street's brief remarks earned him both a burst of applause and a smattering of boos.

The handful of boo-birds wore green-and-yellow T-shirts that identified them as members of District Council 33, which represents the city's blue-collar workforce.

Although the AFL-CIO federation has endorsed Street, some of its affiliated unions have yet to take a stand. These include four unions that represent 24,000 city workers.

Herman "Pete" Matthews, president of District Council 33, shook Street's hand as he climbed to the platform at 15th Street and JFK Boulevard.

But he said later that his workers were disappointed with both Street and Katz.

"We're waiting for one of the mayoral candidates to come to us and say he wants to negotiate a fair contract," Matthews said. "Neither one of them has done that."

Matthews bitterly opposed labor agreements in 1992 that required city unions to make $370 million in sacrifices over four years.

Whoever is elected mayor Nov. 2 will have to deal with the unions' pent-up demand for a payback.

Current contracts, negotiated in 1996, expire June 30.

"The reason the city has gotten back financially is because of the sacrifices we have made," Matthews said.

The unions were angry with Street for supporting Mayor Rendell on the 1992 contracts. Street, at the time, was president of City Council.

But Matthews said the unions are wary that Katz would want to privatize more city services, moves that could cost city workers their jobs. Katz yesterday did not rule that out, although he said he preferred working with the unions to find alternative cost savings.

Street, who marched in the parade along the Parkway, did not address the unions' concerns yesterday.

John McDermott, the Constitutional Party candidate, could be seen shaking hands with parade watchers on the sidewalks. He got no chance to speak.

Katz, who did not attend the parade but campaigned later at a German folk festival at Cannstatter-Volksfest-Verein in the Northeast, said in a news conference at his office that if elected, he hoped to work as a partner with the unions. He promised cooperation and respect but made it clear he would seek "improved productivity and lowered cost."

If savings are not found, he said, city taxes cannot be reduced. And if taxes cannot be reduced, he said, taxpayers will continue to flee Philadelphia. That would only worsen the city's downward economic spiral and make it harder to give workers fair contracts.

Katz praised a 1996 agreement between Rendell and the city's nonuniformed unions to work together on finding money-saving ideas. Called the Redesigning Government Initiative, it has included better means of distributing lunches at Recreation Department summer programs and a better way of performing tax audits on some businesses.

Katz contended that the program could have been more effective if it hadn't been "ignored largely" by the Rendell administration. He promised to give the program greater emphasis and extend it beyond its planned expiration next June.

Kevin Feeley, the mayor's spokesman, said in an interview after the Katz news conference that the program was a "major initiative" by Rendell that Rendell cared very much about.

Feeley said that while program results were not as dramatic in cost-saving as some might have hoped, it had "fundamentally changed" the way the city and its unions deal with each other.