[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 43 (Wednesday, March 8, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3685-S3687]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           ORDER OF PROCEDURE

  Mr. DOLE. Madam President, I will yield to the Senator from 
Massachusetts in a moment. We will adjourn or recess following that 
statement.
  For the information of my colleagues, we will complete action on the 
supplemental bill tomorrow; therefore, Senators should be aware 
rollcall votes are expected throughout tomorrow's session, probably 
into the evening, and I ask that following the statement by the 
distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, the Senate 
stand in recess under the previous order.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, President Clinton is right to use his 
executive authority to side with American workers and defend their 
basic right to strike. An insidious business practice has grown up in 
recent years like mushrooms in the dark under which employers hire 
permanent replacements for striking workers. That practice is unfair 
and ought to be prohibited, and that is what the President's Executive 
order does. It restores the fair balance in labor-management relations 
and ends the unfair tilt against working families.
  I urge the Senate to defeat the Kassebaum amendment, to support the 
President and reject the unseemly business and Republican right wing 
pressure to nullify his order.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I ask unanimous consent that I have up to 5 minutes to 
speak before we adjourn.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.
  Madam President, let me rise in this Chamber to echo the words of the 
Senator from Massachusetts.
  I believe the action taken by the President is an extremely important 
message. It is an important message that has a great deal to do with 
fairness and restoring some balance of power between those who work for 
wages and management. I do not think we are really going to be able to 
build the kind of successful economy we need for ourselves, for our 
children, and for our grandchildren unless we have high morale, high 
levels of productivity, and a really good working relationship between 
labor and management.
  I have seen over the past decade-plus so many strikes defeated, so 
many unions busted, so many broken lives, so many broken families, and 
so many broken dreams, and the right to strike has now become the right 
to be fired, and so much of what many of us or many of our parents or 
many of our grandparents fought for, which was basic collective 
bargaining rights, some kind of fairness in the workplace, some kind of 
support for working people is, I think, really very much in peril.
  So, Madam President, I just want to make it clear as we discuss this 
amendment tomorrow I will be in the Chamber, I will be in the Chamber 
with documents, I will be in the Chamber with 
[[Page S3686]] a very full analysis, and I will make every effort 
possible as a Senator to make this debate real in terms of what it 
means in personal terms for working people, whether they be in unions 
or whether they not be in unions. So I look forward to a very spirited 
and a lively and very important and I think a very long debate.
  Madam President, I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I look forward to the debate tomorrow. 
I applaud the action, as I mentioned earlier, the President has taken. 
We will have an opportunity to debate both the authority and the 
reasons for that.
  Quite clearly, the President has the responsibility to make sure, in 
terms of implementing the various contracting responsibilities in which 
the Federal Government is involved, that there is going to be a good 
product received in a timely way which meets the various quality 
standards. He has a responsibility to do so. He has made the judgment 
that this action is called for.
  I was not here earlier tonight at the time those who opposed this 
action were saying that we ought to have a legislative solution. Last 
year I was on the floor of the Senate, with, I believe, my friend and 
colleague, the Senator from Minnesota, when we attempted to take that 
action, and it was effectively filibustered by those who refused to let 
the majority of the Members of this body take that action in a 
bipartisan way. The House of Representatives had taken that action in 
an overwhelming way. So we were denied the opportunity to take action 
by the Congress to address this in a legislative way.
  The President has responded in a responsible way, and we will have an 
opportunity to look over the recent history as we debate this issue--
the actions that were taken by the President, President Bush, and other 
Presidents who had used Executive orders to diminish the legitimate 
rights of workers in this country at a time when legislative proposals 
were before this body.
  But it is important that we understand what is at risk for tens of 
thousands, hundreds of thousands of working families. I do not know 
what it is about the Republicans. They have it in for working families, 
for the most part families that are making $25,000, $26,000 a year, 
trying to pay a mortgage, trying to educate their children, trying to 
make sure that their parents are going to live constructive and 
productive and hopeful lives. I do not know what it is that the 
Republican leadership and the Republican Party has against those 
Americans who are the backbone of this country.
  We already heard the efforts in our committee, the Labor and Human 
Resources Committee. We have seen the actions taken by the House to 
effectively emasculate the Davis-Bacon Act. The average construction 
worker is making $27,000 a year--$27,000 a year. What is it about 
working families that the Republicans have to try to diminish the wages 
and the working conditions and the rights of working families? We have 
seen that. And we will see and have the opportunity to debate that 
issue on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
  Here we have another example about the attitude of Republicans 
towards working families. It is very interesting. You talk about trying 
to do something about health care for working families--``No, we cannot 
do that. We cannot possibly address it, to make sure that working 
families are going to be able to have health insurance.''
  We want to do something about minimum wage--``Oh, no, we cannot pass 
that. We cannot have an increase in the minimum wage. We cannot bring 
the minimum wage up to try to make it a livable wage. We cannot do 
that, even though we have record profits in this country and even 
though the minimum wage has decreased in terms of its purchasing power 
to what it was the last time we increased the minimum wage and with 
Republican--with bipartisan support. No, we cannot have an increase in 
the minimum wage.''
  We have to do something about those families whose kids are going on 
to college. We have to assist those two-thirds of the young people in 
my State, 67 percent of whom require student loans, to be able to 
afford a college education. But the Republicans say, ``No, we are going 
to make them pay increased interest rates while they are going to 
school and college. The indebtedness of those sons and daughters of 
working families is not high enough. We are going to make them pay 
more.''
  And now we find when it comes to an economic issue for working 
families we have them in the bullseye again. When you just look across 
the spectrum: No on the minimum wage, retreat in terms of Davis-Bacon, 
to try to make sure workers rights are going to be preserved so we are 
going to get quality product--that is basically the issue. As John 
Dunlop has pointed out, the issue is not the wages, it is performance. 
You can pay less wages and get a lousy product and the taxpayer will be 
left holding the bag.
  So we have ``no'' on the minimum wage, ``no'' in terms of trying to 
do something to protect the construction workers and give the assurance 
to the taxpayers on their interests, ``no'' in terms of looking out 
after the legitimate rights of working families who are trying to 
participate in this dramatic expansion of the profits that we have seen 
in the period of the last 4 or 5 years for the major companies and 
corporations. The workers are not getting any participation in it. For 
the first time, basically, in the history of the industrial revolution 
in the United States, workers are not participating.
  All they are trying to do is, not demand, but what they want to do is 
to be able to represent their views, economic views, in a collective 
bargaining context which is as old as the industrial policy of this 
country. We find the first time the President stands up on that to try 
to protect it, the ink is not even dry and our Republican friends are 
declaring all-out war on these working families.
  Sometimes we have to say ``no.'' I look forward to the debate and 
discussion when we will get into greater detail, not only on these 
measures but on the particular Executive order. On tomorrow we will 
have a chance to debate this issue.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for a moment?
  Mr. KENNEDY. I will be glad to yield.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator, my colleague from Massachusetts, 
agree that actually tomorrow will be a very important day for the 
Senate and for the country, because we really will have a full 
opportunity to talk about the concerns and circumstances of working 
families? That this really will be an opportunity to talk about wages, 
to talk about jobs, talk about opportunities--
  Mr. KENNEDY. Talk about children.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. To talk about children, that is correct. To really 
talk about what is being attempted right now in the House of 
Representatives, and over here in the Senate, and to try to take all of 
this discussion about strategy--I really respect the way the Senator 
put it just a moment ago--all this talk of strategy and which buttons 
to push, to put it in personal terms: families, people's lives, 
opportunities.
  I think tomorrow will be a day--I ask the Senator--where we will take 
the opportunity to really spell out in great detail what the meaning of 
all this is.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I agree with the Senator. We just got notice of the 
introduction of this amendment a short while ago. We will have a full 
opportunity to debate it tomorrow. I was prepared to debate it this 
evening or tomorrow or the day after or whatever it takes. The Senator 
is one of our leaders in terms of what has been happening to children, 
to children's rights and children's interests, what has been happening 
to hungry children. These are the sons and daughters of working 
families. All of this is coming into a sharper perspective. And all of 
these are basically related to the economic rights of working families.
  They are not able to pursue those economic rights which have been 
basic and fundamental rights in our society, and which have been the 
backbone of our strength and vitality--the fact that men and women were 
able to pursue their economic dreams, as well as the success of the 
private sector, in a way which both of the parties were able to grow 
and to prosper. And to see that kind of effort to diminish that, and to 
also see, Madam President, the efforts that have been made in the 
recent days on changing Taft-Hartley, 
[[Page S3687]] and that 8(a)2 provision, to try to repeal the existing 
ability for the trade union movement to organize workers, to have that 
whole concept threatened with company-controlled unions, as I fear 
would be the case with the 8(a)2 recommendations--this is all part of 
an effort.
  We are only into this year some 2\1/2\ months. Take how we are going 
to change the whole Taft-Hartley law and the 8(a)2, take the action 
this evening on the President's Executive order to protect workers 
rights, take the opposition to the minimum wage--the whole series. We 
will have a chance to debate this, hopefully, in an informed, balanced 
way tomorrow and to really point out what is at risk with this 
particular amendment from my friend and colleague.
  I urge my colleagues this evening to think deeply about this 
amendment. It is a matter of enormous importance and I think it will 
tell a great deal about this Senate and also about where we as a 
country are really going in these next few years.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. If the Senator will yield for one final question?
  Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator agree with me that some of the issues 
that he just highlighted tonight have a great deal to do with 60 years 
of history, and to an extent this agenda we see right now is an attempt 
to really turn the clock back in a way people of the United States of 
America, when they see it, will just not support? It is beyond the 
goodness of people. It is beyond what people are about in our country.
  Will the Senator agree that this really calls for, tomorrow, a full 
debate? This really calls for a day of real debate on this question? So 
it will be our hope that Senators will be out here and we will have a 
chance to go through these issues in great depth.
  Mr. KENNEDY. The Senator is absolutely correct. I will look forward 
to that opportunity.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I look forward to that.
  

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