[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 89 (Tuesday, July 12, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
     NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT AND RAILWAY LABOR ACT AMENDMENTS

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the motion.
  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I do hope that the cloture vote presently 
scheduled for tomorrow will serve as the ``last rites'' for this 
session of Congress for a very bad piece of legislation, S. 55.
  Mr. President, it seems that bad ideas proposed in the Senate never 
die. They just fade away for a while, certain to be resurrected for the 
purpose of kowtowing to some special interest group. That is precisely 
the case with S. 55, the so-called Workplace Fairness Act, which would 
be more properly identifiable, I think, as the pushbutton strike bill, 
because with the push of a political button, big labor can prompt 
enough work stoppages and strikes to bring the American economy to its 
knees.
  S. 55, in one form or another, with varying language, has been a 
perennial favorite with certain Members of Congress with strong 
political alliances to the labor union bosses. S. 55 fractures the 
delicate balance between workers and employers which has made the 
American workplace the job engine of the world.
  Think of this, Mr. President: Since 1938, U.S. labor law has 
carefully balanced labor's right to withhold its services against 
management's rights to keep its doors open.
  Contrary to the absurd claims of labor union bosses, management's 
right to replace striking workers has been seldom invoked. In fact, the 
most recent study by the GAO showed that although management has often 
threatened to use its legal rights, the threats were carried out in 
only 17 percent of all strikes and affected less than 4 percent of all 
striking workers.
  Among other things, S. 55 denies employers the right to offer 
permanent jobs to new employees during a strike. Under this legislation 
as proposed, anybody hired during a strike would have to be fired. 
Also, employers would have to cancel any promotions or raises given 
during the strike. S. 55 would prohibit workers from doing anything but 
marching to the tune of the labor bosses. So just when millions of 
American workers are saying no to organized labor, along comes the 
Senator from Ohio and the Senator from Massachusetts, with the aid of 
President Clinton, to breathe life into the dying labor union movement.
  It is not going to work, not even with the Congress as presently 
constituted, and I suspect that the Congress will be constituted a 
little bit differently come next year. We will see about that in 
November.
  In any case, make no mistake about it, S. 55 is a dangerous bill. At 
stake is the right of every employer to keep his business operating 
during labor unrest. At stake is the future of millions of American 
workers who refuse to be coerced into joining labor unions. At stake is 
whether we will accelerate the flight of American companies to Mexico 
and the Far East because of out-of-kilter, coercive labor laws.
  Ponder this question: Will any worker be willing to risk life and 
limb to cross a picket line and go to work if this bill should pass? I 
certainly think not. This legislation leaves workers with no practical 
alternative but to join a union at a time when Americans of all stripes 
are repeatedly rejecting the tactics of the labor union bosses.
  The leaders of the AFL-CIO have acknowledged that they want this 
legislation to make their strike weapon as powerful as possible. But, 
Mr. President, a distinguished friend of mine, Walter Williams, who 
happens to be professor of economics at George Mason University, had an 
observation which was very interesting and very effective. Let me quote 
part of what he said.
  Professor Williams observed:

       Unions' power comes from their ability through laws or 
     violence to prevent businesses from hiring other workers. If 
     they didn't have that ability, a strike would be just a 
     massive resignation.
       The union struggle is not against employers, as popularly 
     thought. It's against workers who are not union members. One 
     way you see this is to ask: Who gets beat up during a strike? 
     It's not owners or management; it's workers who've disagreed 
     with the union and wish to work. The union labels these men 
     and women trying to earn a livelihood ``scabs.'' The National 
     Right to Work Committee estimates that almost 6,000 violent 
     incidents have occurred during strikes since 1975, including 
     the 1990-1993 Greyhound bus strike, where buses were shot at 
     52 times.

  As Professor Williams clearly illustrates, organized labor's 
objective is not to destroy employers outright. The union's top goal is 
to increase its membership rolls and to fill up the labor union coffers 
with forced union dues. This bill, S. 55, proposes to give the union 
the leverage to demand that all of a company's workers be forced to pay 
the bills the union leaders demand. Mr. President, what worker will be 
able to withstand threats, picket-line violence, and blacklisting to 
work at a job if he knows that, by law, the employer must punish or 
fire him as soon as the union says the strike is over? The answer to 
that is self-evident. Why should big labor end future strikes quickly 
and quietly? They will not do it, if this bill should pass, which 
thankfully I believe it will not. But under this proposed bill, union 
strikers cannot lose their jobs and the bosses cannot lose the massive 
dues paid to their unions.
  The Clinton administration is in the White House partly because of 
the money and organization big labor was able to provide in 1992, as 
has been the case in every election in my memory. Fair enough. Big 
labor means big bucks for liberal politicians. Labor union political 
action committees gave $41.3 million to Democratic candidates in 1991 
and 1992. But my friend Reed Larson of the National Right to Work 
Committee points out that $41 million of that $41.3 million was only 
the tip of the iceberg. And he is right. Unreported soft money 
contributions to the Democratic Party in the form of phone banks, get-
out-the-vote drives, door-to-door canvassing, amounted to at least 10 
times the value of that $41 million up-front money.
  So maybe that is the reason you see certain Members of Congress and 
other politicians clamoring to do the bidding of labor union bosses 
every time a piece of legislation like this is proposed.
  In any event, as I said earlier, Mr. Clinton is working overtime to 
make the AFL-CIO forget his support of NAFTA. During the campaign he 
said he was on the side of working Americans, ``who work hard and play 
by the rules.''
  I almost wept when I heard him say that.
  Unfortunately, the striker replacement bill shows once again that the 
President's political rhetoric is far from the reality of his actions. 
Even though Mr. Clinton himself is from a right-to-work State, as is 
the State of North Carolina, he has surrounded himself with advisers 
who have nothing but contempt for the right of the American worker to 
offer his skills to any employer without fear of coercion or 
retribution. The attitude of the Labor Secretary Robert Reich is 
clearly illustrative. In 1985, while he was an instructor at Harvard 
University, Mr. Reich had this to say about the workplace in America. 
These are his exact words.

       In order to maintain themselves unions have got to have 
     some ability to strap their members to the mast. The only way 
     unions can exercise countervailing power vis-a-vis management 
     is to hold their members' feet to the fire when times get 
     tough. Otherwise the labor union is only as good as it is 
     convenient for any given member at any given time.

  There may have been a more callous description of labor unions by an 
individual supporter of the labor union movement, but I cannot think of 
one.
  Incidentally, Mr. Reich was correct in what he said. Now that Mr. 
Clinton and Mr. Reich are in charge they are doing everything they can 
to see that the Federal Government helps organized labor hold every 
American worker's feet to the fire. Mr. Clinton and Mr. Reich are not 
new Democrats. They are more like their socialist friends in the 
British Labor Party, an organization which constantly lives up to its 
name in that economically troubled country.
  Under these circumstances, we should expect more strikes for longer 
periods of time. That is what happened in Canada once striker 
replacement legislation became law north of the border. According to 
the Journal of Labor Economics, the province of Quebec nearly went 
bankrupt from the loss of revenue from businesses that had to shut down 
because of increased strike activity.
  I noted the Heritage Foundation reported the other day that the 
striker replacement law in Italy has cost that country 1,440 workdays 
per 1,000 workers every year compared with fewer than 100 days lost in 
the United States due to strikes.
  Now this legislation, as proposed, if passed--and I do not think it 
will pass--will wreak havoc on the State of North Carolina. And, of 
course, I have a provincial interest in that. North Carolina has the 
longest right-to-work tradition of any State in the Union. Businesses--
big and small--are rushing into North Carolina in part because of our 
excellent educational system, but also because employers in other 
States know that their workplace will be free from intimidation and 
outside agitation by labor bosses. It is no accident that North 
Carolina has the lowest unemployment rate of the 20 largest States in 
America. However, if a measure such as S. 55 should happen to pass, 
North Carolina's right-to-work tradition, which is more than 100 years 
old, as I pointed out earlier, would be swept away with one stroke of 
Bill Clinton's pen. And I am totally, unalterably opposed to that. So 
much for the Democrat who proposed so piously that he was going to 
stand by the working men and women ``who work so hard and play by the 
rules.''
   Mr. President, on Monday Senators Metzenbaum and Wellstone 
asserted--and I want to be as charitable as possible, but the best 
description I can think of in reference to what they said is nonsense--
that to be against this bill is to be against the worker. Nothing could 
be further from the truth. In any free country, workers must be free to 
organize themselves and to strike. That is a given, everybody agrees to 
that.
  It is already illegal to fire strikers and hire replacements if a 
company engages in unfair or dangerous practices. But when workers do 
strike for higher pay or benefits, they take a risk, as they should, 
that their employers will not be able to find the skilled people to 
replace them. That they are sometimes, though rarely, replaced keeps 
sanity and stability in the workplace.
  Even the Washington Post noted back on April 27, 1993, that the 
striker replacement bill, in the judgment of the Washington Post, if 
you can believe this, is,

       * * * ill advised legislation whose long-term effect would 
     be to hurt the U.S. economy far more than it would help. * * 
     * it's one thing to try to keep the collective bargaining 
     system functioning, quite another to get into the business of 
     trying to ordain a result.

  And I am glad to say on this occasion to the Washington Post, 
``Amen,'' because I so seldom get a chance to do that.
  In any event, because of the largest tax increase in American history 
and an explosion of job choking regulations, the Clinton administration 
and its acolytes in the Congress--House and Senate--have already 
produced a jobless recovery. We simply cannot afford to let them get 
away with their radical plans to wreck the American workplace. There is 
nothing, repeat nothing, fair about the Workplace Fairness bill. This 
legislation discriminates against the small businessmen who struggle to 
provide 90 percent of our jobs, by the way, it discriminates against 
employees who choose to remain on the job and, it discriminates against 
workers who just do not want to join a union. This bill gives striking 
union members exclusive rights to jobs they refuse to perform and that 
is not fair for any American, union member or otherwise. Rest assured, 
if this sort of legislation should ever pass, the big winners--the only 
winners, as a matter of fact--will be the big labor bosses who will get 
richer and fatter and perhaps some of the politicians down in Mexico 
City who are ready to welcome more and more American companies fleeing 
from more taxes and regulation.

  In summation, Mr. President, striker replacement means higher labor 
costs, higher prices, lower productivity, and fewer jobs and that is 
all this economy needs to send it spiraling down into another 
recession. The Las Vegas Journal recently warned those who have bought 
into this Kennedy-Metzenbaum-Clinton labor plan, that they will ``do 
well to steer clear as these dinosaurs race for the tarpit.''
  And I think that says it all.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BAUCUS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana is recognized.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I first want to thank the Senator from 
Kansas for graciously allowing me to proceed. He was here on the floor 
ahead of me. I thank the Senator for his graciousness.
  Mr. President, I rise today in support of the motion to proceed to 
full Senate debate of S. 55, the ban on the permanent replacement of 
striking workers. This issue has been before the Congress for several 
years. It deserves the benefit of complete debate and I urge my 
colleagues who voted to prevent that debate to reconsider.
  Many of my colleagues have already spoken on this important issue, so 
I will speak briefly.
  Section 13 of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the law that 
has guided this country's labor law, expressly protects the right of 
American workers to strike, if necessary. But in 1938, the U.S. Supreme 
Court said that Mackay Radio and Telegraph Co. could hire permanent 
replacements. However, for almost 40 years permanent replacements were 
rarely used. But in the last decade, unfortunately, we have seen an 
increase in the use of permanent replacements allowed by the Mackay 
case.
  American labor policy is based on maintaining the fragile balance 
between labor and management. The right to strike is a fundamental 
principle of the nation's labor policy. However, the right to strike 
means nothing if a worker is fired as a result. When workers vote to 
strike over wages or health benefits, they are not voting to 
permanently replace their employer--they are voting to withhold their 
labor while they continue to negotiate. If an employer permanently 
replaces a striking worker there is no hope for continued 
negotiations--no hope for compromise. The threat of being permanently 
replaced undermines the right to collectively bargain, to negotiate, to 
go on strike if necessary. It is that simple.
  Neither management nor workers prefer dispute to resolution; no 
member of this body wants to encourage the frequency of strikes, the 
duration of strikes, or the bitterness of strikes. Workers want to be 
at work earning a decent living for their families. Management wants a 
business that is running at full steam. We all prefer successful 
collective bargaining and a strong partnership between labor and 
management.
  That is the balance we are trying to restore with this bill. Let us 
debate it on its merits and vote it up or down. This is a matter of 
basic equity. Let us get on with it.
  Mr. President, on another matter, I ask unanimous consent to speak as 
if in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.

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