The importance of the union vote was evident Friday when the head of a major American union came to Akron to campaign for Sen. Barack Obama.

''In four days, Ohio will send a message to America and to the world that the Democratic candidate for president of the United States will be Sen. Barack Obama,'' said Bruce Raynor, general president of UNITE HERE, which represents 450,000 active members and 400,000 retirees.

''If we don't have enough reasons to understand why we need Senator Obama as president of the United States, let's remind ourselves of the North American Free Trade Agreement, passed in 1995 by President Clinton. That's Bill Clin
ton,'' he said, referring to the husband of Obama's rival in Tuesday's primary election, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

UNITE was formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees; HERE, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union.

UNITE HERE is part of the Change to Win Federation, a partnership of seven unions and 6 million members founded three years ago to ''organize workers of the new American economy,'' according to a UNITE HERE news release.

The Change to Win Federation is made up of the following unions: Service Employees International; UNITE HERE; United Food and Commercial Workers International; the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; the Laborers' International Union of North America; the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America; and the United Farm Workers of America.

Change to Win wants to reach more than 100,000 members in the state and is sending out more than 400,000 pieces of mail in a get-out-the-vote effort. The group aims to contact 50,000 voters, according to the news release.

The 100 local members from Ohio and across the country who came to the Teamsters Local 348 hall on West Market Street were to canvass union homes in Northeast Ohio to ask them to vote for Obama.

One union member, Bob Rhineberger of Norwalk, president of UNITE HERE Local 1422, said he was working for Obama because, ''We've got jobs leaving the country and we need to keep them here.''

He said he works at Janesville Acoustics, which makes noise insulation materials for the automotive industry. The company's work force has declined from 535 members to 269 members over the years.

Obama, Rhineberger said, ''brings a different light altogether'' to the national political debate and ''he is trying to stand up for the working man.''

Lisa Cline of Minneapolis, a board member of UNITE HERE Local 17 at LSG Sky Chefs, said she was volunteering on a presidential election for the first time.

''When he says change, he really means change,'' she said of Obama.

Raynor told the volunteers that 1 million manufacturing jobs in the textile and apparel industry have been lost since NAFTA passed.

''There are factories all over the state of Ohio that are dead that once employed hundreds of thousands of workers from Findlay to Cleveland to Cincinnati, from one corner of this state to another . . . monuments to how bad NAFTA was for textile and apparel workers,'' he said.

This election, he said, ''is about jobs, it's about living standards. . . . It's about protecting American jobs.''