[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 44 (Thursday, March 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3696-S3720]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS AND RESCISSIONS ACT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of H.R. 889, which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 889) making emergency supplemental 
     appropriations and rescissions to preserve and enhance the 
     military readiness for the Department of Defense for the 
     fiscal year ending September 30, 1995, and for other 
     purposes.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.

       Pending:
       Bumpers amendment No. 330, to restrict the obligation or 
     expenditure of funds on the NASA/Russian Cooperative MIR 
     program.
       Kassebaum amendment No. 331 (to committee amendment 
     beginning on page 1, line 3), to limit funding of an 
     executive order that would prohibit Federal contractors from 
     hiring permanent replacements for striking workers.
                           Amendment No. 331

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pending is amendment No. 331, offered by the 
Senator from Kansas, to committee amendment beginning on page 1, line 
3.
  The Senator from Kansas is recognized.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, if I may speak for a few moments. I 
spoke last night, when I offered my amendment, about what I regarded as 
an exceptionally important issue. I would like to go through some of 
those same arguments again for those who might not have been in their 
offices or on the floor last night.
  I offered an amendment that would prevent the President's Executive 
order on striker replacements from taking effect. I offered the 
amendment because I am deeply troubled by the precedents that will be 
set by this Executive order.
  This is not a debate about whether there should or should not be the 
opportunity to replace striking workers with permanent replacement 
workers.
  As we debate this amendment, Mr. President, we will hear a great deal 
on both sides about the use of permanent replacements. In my view, a 
ban on permanent replacements will upset the fundamental balance in 
management-labor relations that has existed now for 60 years. We have 
debated this issue for three Congresses now, and I know there are 
strongly held views on both sides.
  That is not the only issue that is at stake here. The central issue 
before Members this morning is whether our national labor policy should 
be determined by executive fiat rather than by an act of Congress. I 
think this is an enormously important question, Mr. President, because 
it really does set a precedent that we should consider carefully.
  By limiting the rights of Federal contractors to hire permanent 
replacements, the President has, in effect, overturned 60 years of 
Federal labor law with the stroke of a pen. I am not a constitutional 
scholar. But I do know that it is the President's role to enforce the 
laws, not to make them. By issuing this Executive order, the President 
has, in my view, overstepped his bounds.
  For the first time, to my knowledge, the President has issued an 
Executive order that contravenes current law. The order will 
effectively prohibit one group, Federal contractors, from taking action 
that every other company is legally permitted to do under current law.
  Regardless of what one thinks about the merits of the striker 
replacement issue, we should all be concerned about the precedent that 
this order will set. For example, what if a President decided to debar 
Federal contractors whose workers decided to go on strike?
  Mr. President, the right to strike is legal, just as the right to 
hire permanent replacement workers for striking workers is legal. So it 
could eventually affect both sides of the coin if indeed we are going 
to start down this slippery slope.
  Supporters of the President's action should think twice about the 
precedent this will set for future administrations that wish to alter 
labor law through the Federal procurement process. We will hear in the 
course of this debate that this Executive order is nothing new, that 
such orders were issued by previous administrations. The fact is that 
none of those Executive orders ran contrary to established labor law.
  For example, President Bush issued an Executive order to enforce the 
Supreme Court's Beck decision. That order merely required employers to 
post a notice to employees informing them of the law. Its purpose was 
to enforce the law as set by Congress and interpreted by the courts.
  No one's rights were infringed. No congressional policy was violated. 
No new rights were established. No existing rights were taken away. By 
contrast, this new Executive order overturns a legal right that has 
existed for 60 years and undermines the existing framework of our 
Federal labor law which Congress, for decades, has declined to change.
  Mr. President, we all have sympathy for the situations occurring in 
plants today where there have been long ongoing strikes. We have 
sympathy for the hardships striking workers face. But I am a strong 
supporter of the collective bargaining process. If indeed we tie one 
hand behind our back, whether it is for strikers or for employers, we 
have harmed the collective bargaining process.
  I urge my colleagues to look at the fine print of this Executive 
order. It sets out a new and unprecedented enforcement and regulatory 
scheme, all without the slightest input of Congress. The Executive 
order gives the Secretary of Labor the power to determine violations of 
the order, a power which Congress in similar circumstances has 
delegated to the National Labor Relations Board.
  In addition, the Executive order gives the Secretary of Labor 
authority to write new regulations on who will be subject to the order. 
Not only does the Executive order circumvent Congress by making a new 
law, it also creates more new regulations.
  According to the Washington Post today, at least part of the 
administration's motivation for issuing the Executive order stems from 
recent strikes such as Bridgestone/Firestone Co. We can all appreciate 
the emotions and upheavals that occur in any labor dispute. They are 
troubling to each and every one of us whether it occurs in our State or 
not. Just weeks ago the Senate overwhelmingly rejected a sense-of-the-
Senate resolution urging intervention in the Bridgestone dispute.
  Here again, the administration has chosen to go around Congress by 
this Executive order. Many on both sides feel quite strongly about the 
issue of striker replacements. I believe existing law provides an 
appropriate balance between the interests of management and labor. But 
we will also hear from those who oppose this amendment because they 
believe that using striker replacements is inherently unfair.
  That issue will be debated, I am sure, at another time. We have done 
so in the past. Mr. President, that misses the point. Regardless of 
what we believe about striker replacements, it is up to Congress and 
not the President to set our national labor policy through legislation. 
We should not relinquish that authority by permitting this Executive 
order to stand.
  Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I strongly support the amendment being 
offered by the Labor and Human Resources Committee Chairwoman, Senator 
Kassebaum, which would prohibit funding for the implementation of the 
President's Executive order which was signed yesterday.
  What does that Executive order do? It bars Federal contractors from 
hiring permanent replacement workers during an economic strike. A 
similar prohibition has already been included in the FEMA supplemental 
appropriation bill which is pending in the House.
  In the event of a finding that permanent replacement workers are used 
in 
[[Page S3697]] any Federal contract exceeding $100,000, which is about 
90 percent of the dollar value of all Federal contracts--in other 
words, this in effect covers all Federal contracts--the Executive order 
authorizes the Secretary of Labor to instruct affected agencies to 
terminate such contracts, if convenient.
  While the Secretary may not compel agency compliance, he may then 
proceed to debar the contractor from receiving or performing any 
Federal contracts until the offending labor dispute is settled.
  Now, Mr. President, I think it is regrettable that the President has 
chosen to circumvent the will of Congress on this issue. That is what 
is happening here. Legislation to prohibit businesses from hiring 
permanent replacement workers was the subject of a bipartisan 
filibuster in 1992 and again in 1994. This matter has come before this 
body twice in the last 3 years.
  Senators feel very strongly that overturning this Supreme Court 
decision of Mackay Radio, 1938--which was some 55 years ago--either 
overturning that by legislation or by Executive order, many Senators 
believe would undermine the very foundation of modern labor relations 
policy. Namely, the collective bargaining process. In Mackay Radio the 
Supreme Court held that employers had the right to maintain business 
operations with the replacement workers in the event of an economic 
strike. That is what the Court said. Just as affected employees have 
the right to strike for better wages or benefits.
  The change proposed would eliminate, in our judgment, any incentive 
for good-faith negotiation and bargaining and create an unlevel playing 
field to the detriment of the employers.
  Now, the bottom line, Mr. President, is that the President's 
Executive order would force Federal contractors hit with a strike to 
accept union economic demands or face the prospect of a prolonged 
shutdown that could prove fatal to these companies. Alternatively, such 
businesses could elect to abandon the Federal contractual marketplace 
altogether.
  One, that is an unlikely option for some of our large contractors; 
two, it is bad for our country. We do not want to eliminate prospective 
bidders. We want to have more bidders, and hopefully that would be 
achieved. That is what we seek. Certainly not possible under this 
legislation.
  Now, Senators also feel strongly that this is a question of labor-
management policy. This is not a procurement issue. The President 
somehow in order to achieve his goal put this in the terms of 
procurement issue. It is a labor-management policy, a labor-management 
situation.
  The Congress, not the executive branch, must initiate any changes in 
our labor laws--that is where this matter belongs, in the Congress of 
the United States--and a change of the kind the President has proposed 
is clearly ill-advised and unwarranted. For this reason, I am certain 
that the President's decision to go forward with this Executive order 
will be challenged in the Federal courts.
  H.R. 889, which is the legislation before us--not the amendment, but 
the basic bill we are debating today--provides urgently needed funding 
to the Department of Defense to shore up sagging readiness and to 
reimburse for services for unexpected contingencies in Haiti, in the 
Persian Gulf, and other hot spots of the world. It would be 
unfortunate, I believe, to delay this funding over the striker 
replacement issue, but the President's decision has left the Senate no 
alternative but to rehash this issue again and to prohibit its 
implementation, if possible.
  The President's Executive order, in our judgment, for those of us who 
oppose the ban on striker replacements, is a job-killing one which, if 
left to stand, would harm our economy, would increase labor strife, 
would reduce productivity, and weaken the competitiveness of U.S. 
industry. Thus, I will vote for the Kassebaum amendment to prohibit its 
implementation, and I urge my colleagues to support the Senator from 
Kansas likewise. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment of 
the Senator from Kansas. We will have an opportunity to debate the 
amendment, but I was interested in listening to the Senator from Kansas 
talk about the procedure which is being followed by the President and 
how this was, in effect, overriding existing law. I think that the 
examples that were touched on briefly, last night regarding the 
issuance of Executive orders or other examples that have been mentioned 
that were utilized by President Bush, for example, were of a different 
nature.
  I take issue because prehiring agreements are basically legal and the 
Executive order by President Bush effectively excluded prehiring 
agreements, any prehiring agreement under Federal contract. It was thus 
in complete conflict with the existing law. We know that, because the 
definitive case at issue involving a prehiring agreement involved all 
of the work being done on Boston Harbor. That agreement was entered 
into and was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court. It is, at the 
present time, working, and working extremely effectively, I might add. 
I will not take the time of the Senate right now to go into how 
effective that particular agreement has been in terms of the saving of 
resources and taxpayers' funds. But an effort to prevent prehire 
agreements certainly was an action that was taken by the previous 
administration, and I did not hear the chorus rise up at the time and 
talk about exceeding the authority and responsibility of the executive 
branch in moving ahead to address that issue. To the contrary, there 
was broad support for the President's action in that area.
  But I would like to just take a few moments to put this amendment in 
some perspective. I think all of us understand the urgency and the 
importance of the underlying legislation and the importance of having 
it concluded at an early time. This legislation is important to our 
national security and national defense, a matter which has been raised 
by the Senator from Kansas. The Senator raises an important public 
policy matter with her amendment. I would have thought we would have 
addressed it in some other forum, although we will certainly welcome 
the opportunity to debate this because it is an extremely important 
issue affecting workers' rights. It is more of an effort, I feel--I do 
not want to draw conclusions in terms of the motivations of it--a real 
attempt to embarrass the President of the United States who has issued 
this proclamation on behalf of working families.
  I think if we look over the period of just recent times, both on the 
floor of the U.S. Senate and also in our committee systems and also 
actions in the House, we find out, if we have a chance to go into it, 
that this is just one more step that is being taken by the majority in 
the House and Senate to undermine the very legitimate interests and 
rights of working families in this country. But I will have a chance to 
address that issue in just a few moments.
  But let me bring focus to the particular matter which is before us in 
the form of the Senator's amendment. Our Republican colleagues have 
asserted that we need to act because the President has exceeded his 
authority by acting on a labor relations issue without specific 
congressional authority and that Congress has already rejected the 
President's action through last year's vote on S. 55, the Workplace 
Fairness Act.
  In fact, a majority, Mr. President, in both Houses of Congress, 
supported making it unlawful for any employer to use permanent 
replacements. The ban was not enacted because a minority of the Senate 
was able to prevent the consideration of S. 55, but Congress never 
rejected the lesser step of prohibiting the use of permanent 
replacements by Federal contractors. We never addressed that issue. 
There was majority support to address this issue in the House of 
Representatives. It was bipartisan. There was majority support to 
readdress the whole striker replacement issue in the Senate, but a 
small minority was able to defeat that action and defeat that policy 
question. No action was taken on the particular authority of the 
President to take the action which he did yesterday.
  President Clinton's action, in issuing this order, is simply an 
exercise of his well-recognized authority over procurement and 
contracting by the executive branch authorities, an authority that was 
exercised both by President 
[[Page S3698]] Reagan and President Bush, with no objections from those 
who are now expressing such dismay.
  In 1992, President Bush issued two Executive orders dealing with 
Federal contractor labor relations which are clear precedents for 
President Clinton's action, which many of my colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle applauded rather than condemned.
  The first of those two Executive orders required all unionized 
Federal contractors to post a notice in their workplace informing all 
employees that they could not be required to join a union and that they 
had a right to refuse to pay dues for any purpose unrelated to 
collective bargaining.
  Those requirements are not requirements of the National Labor 
Relations Act, and not only were they never enacted by Congress, but 
proposed legislation to establish such rules had so little support that 
it was never even reported from the committee. Indeed, when President 
Bush issued that Executive order, his press secretary pointed to 
Congress' failure to act on the legislation as the President's reason 
for acting.
  That is in dramatic contrast to the current situation on the whole 
question of permanent replacement where a majority of the Members of 
the House and even a majority of the Members of the Senate were 
prepared to act, wanted to act, and that action was foreclosed by a 
small group of Members in the Senate. In contrast to this situation, 
they could not even get the support for that particular proposal to get 
the measure out of committee.
  So was there objection at that time either from the Senator from 
Kansas or others? Were there any protests from my Republican 
colleagues? There were not. It is clear that the objections that are 
now being raised to President Clinton's action are not based on 
principle or a consistent view of the President's authority with 
respect to labor relations in Federal procurement.
  The second of the two Bush Executive orders on Federal contractor 
labor relations issued in October 1992 dealt with prehiring agreements, 
collective bargaining agreements that establish labor standards for 
construction work prior to the hiring of workers.
  Prehire agreements are common in the construction industry and lawful 
under the National Labor Relations Act, yet President Bush, without any 
specific authorization by Congress, prohibited Federal contractors from 
entering into such agreements for work on Federal projects.
  Did my Republican colleague object to the fact that President Bush 
was prohibiting a labor relations practice that Congress had chosen to 
permit? She did not, and neither did any of the other Republican 
Senators.
  What is this really all about? The truth is that this debate is a 
continuation of our debates in the past two Congresses on the Workplace 
Fairness Act. Only now the shoe is on the other foot and it is clearly 
pinching our Republican friends. They forced us to get 60 votes to pass 
the act, which we were unable to do.
  The basic principle behind the President's action has strong public 
support. In the latest poll from Fingerhut Associates, 64 percent of 
respondents said that once a majority of workers have voted to strike, 
companies should not be allowed to hire permanent replacements to take 
their jobs. The American people understand that this is a question of 
simple justice for workers.
  That is what the issue is about, simple justice for workers.
  It is unlawful for any employer to fire a worker for exercising the 
right to strike, and it should be equally unlawful for an employer to 
be able to deprive a striking worker of his job by permanently 
replacing that worker. It is as simple as that.
  Repeatedly, when we are debating economic legislation and U.S. 
competitiveness in the world economy, Senators from both sides of the 
aisle praise the high productivity of American workers, their excellent 
skills, and their pride in their work. Yet much of the legislation we 
pass ignores the importance of treating American workers fairly. The 
Executive order is for the American worker. It will restore the balance 
of power intended between management and labor under the National Labor 
Relations Act.
  Basically, the striker replacement legislation was to restore the 
balance which had existed for years and contributed so mightily in 
terms of our whole economic progress and our industrial strength. That 
balance has been shifted and changed in recent times with the strike 
replacement activities of a number of employers, and that has 
diminished the economic standing of American workers who continue to be 
the backbone of the American economy.
  That farsighted act, the National Labor Relations Act, signed into 
law by President Roosevelt in 1935 as the cornerstone of the New Deal, 
recognized the inherent inequality between the ineffective bargaining 
power of a lone worker seeking to improve wages and working conditions 
and the overwhelming bargaining power of the employer.
  As part of comprehensive legislation enacting the fundamental goals 
of national labor policy, the 1935 act guaranteed the rights of workers 
to form and join labor organizations and engage in collective 
bargaining with their employers. The act gave workers strength in 
numbers. It gave them countervailing power, capable of matching the 
power of the employers.
  As the Supreme Court said in 1935 in a landmark decision upholding 
the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act, long ago we 
stated the reason for labor organizations. We said they were organized 
out of the necessities of the situation, that a single employee was 
helpless in dealing with an employer, and that he was dependent 
ordinarily on his daily wage for the maintenance of himself and his 
family; that if the employer refused to pay him the wages that he 
thought fair, he was nevertheless unable to leave the employer's employ 
and resist arbitrary and unfair treatment; that the union was essential 
to give laborers an opportunity to deal on an equal basis with the 
employer.
  Today, as much as ever, the employees need the right to organize to 
improve their wages, working conditions, and enter into a dialog with 
their employers about how work should be arranged so that the firm can 
achieve its productivity, its profitability goals, while at the same 
time ensuring fair treatment for workers. But the right to organize and 
bargain collectively is only a hollow promise if management is allowed 
to use the tactic of permanently replacing the workers that go on 
strike.
  No one likes strikes, least of all the strikers who lose their wages 
during any strike and risk the loss of health coverage and other 
benefits. Because both workers and employers have a mutual interest in 
avoiding economic losses, the overwhelming majority of collective 
bargaining disputes are settled without a strike, but the right to 
strike helps to ensure that a fair economic bargain is reached between 
employers and workers.
  The labor laws give workers the right to join together to combine 
their strength, and the union movement has been responsible for many of 
the gains that workers have achieved in the past half century. The 
process of collective bargaining works. It prevents workers from being 
exploited and has created a productive balance of power between 
management and labor. And the cornerstone of collective bargaining is 
the right to strike. That right is nullified by the practice of 
permanently replacing workers who go on strike. The entire process of 
collective bargaining is undermined.
  That is basically what is at issue here, as I described. That is the 
basic and fundamental matter of principle that is before the Senate 
today. It is as old as the debate in terms of our whole industrial 
development and strength as a country, and it is basic and fundamental 
to the issues of economic justice and social progress in our country. 
That is why it is such a principal issue that has to be addressed today 
and why it will need discussion and debate.
  Both the National Labor Relations Act and the Railway Labor Act 
explicitly prohibited employers from firing employees who exercised 
their right to strike. As a result of a loophole created by the Supreme 
Court half a century ago but seldom used until recent years, the 
practice of permanently replacing striker workers allows employers to 
achieve the same result. The ability to hire permanent replacements 
tilts the balance unfairly in favor of business in labor/management 
relations, and it is 
[[Page S3699]] no surprise that business is lobbying hard to block this 
Executive order.
  Hiring permanent replacements encourages intransigence by management 
in negotiating with labor. It encourages employers to replace current 
workers with new workers willing to settle for less and to accept 
smaller pay checks and other benefits. The Executive order will help 
restore the balance that has been distorted in recent years. It will 
reaffirm the original promise of the statutes and give workers the 
right to bargain collectively and participate in peaceful activity in 
furtherance of their goals without fear of being fired.
  The Supreme Court's decision in the Mackay Radio case in 1938 is a 
source of the current problem, even though the issue is not squarely 
raised in the case itself. In Mackay, the Court ruled it was unlawful 
for an employer to refuse to reinstate striking union leaders when the 
employer had reinstated other striking union members. The Court refused 
to allow the employer to discriminate between strike leaders and other 
strikers. It ordered the employer to put the permanently replaced 
striking union leaders back to work. In fact, the Supreme Court did not 
even have before it the issue of the legality of permanently replacing 
striking workers, but language in the decision condoning the employer's 
hiring of permanent replacements has been interpreted as permitting the 
practice as long as the employer does not use it in a discriminatory 
way.
  This aspect of the Mackay decision had no significant impact on labor 
relations for nearly half a century. Few employers resorted to 
permanent replacements or even threatened to use that tactic. Employers 
and workers had a mutual understanding that strikes are only temporary 
disruptions in an ongoing satisfactory relationship. Businesses 
responded to strikes in various ways, by having supervisors perform the 
work, by hiring temporary replacements, and by shutting down 
operations. Employers acted on the belief that their work force was 
valuable and not easily replaced and that once the temporary labor 
dispute was over, the two sides would resume the collective bargaining 
relationship that brought the benefits and stability to each.
  In fact, a survey by the Wharton Business School in 1982 revealed 
that most employers found no need to hire any replacements during a 
strike. Many believed that hiring even temporary replacements was 
undesirable because it would make the settlement of the strike and 
resumption of stable labor relations more difficult after the dispute, 
and under those circumstances there was no need to seek a change in the 
law.
  But in the 1970's and 1980's, this de facto pattern began to change, 
and most observers feel that the strongest signal for change came in 
1981 when President Reagan summarily dismissed the PATCO, air traffic 
controllers who went on strike and permanent replacements were hired by 
the FAA.
  The increased use of permanent replacements in recent years has been 
confirmed by a survey of the NLRB decisions and other reported cases. 
During the four decades from 1935 to 1973, the survey found an average 
of 6 strikes a year in which permanent replacements were used, but the 
number quadrupled to an average of 23 strikes per year for the period 
1974 through 1991.
  Mr. President, I have other remarks but I see my friend from Illinois 
and also Wisconsin on the floor. I know other colleagues are here, so I 
will yield in just a few moments and then come back and continue my 
discussion of this issue.
  Mr. President, I am somewhat troubled by the whole pattern that has 
been developed in the period of these last several weeks and what it 
means for working families in this country. I cannot help but conclude 
that the actions that we have before us in the proposal of my good 
friend, the Senator from Kansas, is not unrelated to a whole stream of 
activities and statements and comments that have been made about the 
condition of working families in this Nation that are really the 
backbone of our country.
  I can think of the recent discussion and debate that we had on an 
issue which is as basic and fundamental as the increase in the minimum 
wage. The origins of this minimum wage go back in time to a similar 
period that we had discussed, with the development of the National 
Labor Relations Act, where it was generally understood in the United 
States of America that if an individual member of the family was 
prepared to work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year, that member was 
going to have a sufficient income so they would not be in poverty, so 
their children would not be in poverty, so that their wife would not be 
in poverty or their husband would not be in poverty--that they would 
not be in poverty. They would effectively be able to own their own 
home--hopefully be able to pay a mortgage--provide for their children, 
live with some sense of dignity and some sense of a future.
  That was a part of the whole social compact that was basically 
supported by Republicans and Democrats alike for a considerable period 
of time. It really lost its thrust in the period of the 1980's, when an 
increase in the minimum wage was vetoed. Eventually a compromise was 
reached. We had an incremental addition of a 45-cent and a 45-cent 
increase in the minimum wage, and we saw that increase go into effect. 
And all of the various suggestions and recommendations that had been 
made about the loss of jobs failed to develop. What happened was that 
hard-working Americans--overwhelmingly women in our society; close to 
75 percent of the people who earn the minimum wage are women in our 
society--they were able, not really to make it but to at least continue 
to work and to try to provide for their children. Make no mistake, the 
issue of minimum wage is an issue for children in our society as well 
as for those individuals who are working to make the minimum wage.
  So a number of us introduced legislation to just raise the minimum 
wage--we thought 50 cents, 50 cents, 50 cents--over the period of the 
next 3 years to try to regain the concept that for a working family, 
work was going to pay, and that people who were prepared to work would 
be able to make sufficient income to provide for their families. Then 
we cut that back to 45 cents and 45 cents. These are effectively the 
same amounts that were accepted previously and supported by a President 
and supported in this body overwhelmingly, by Republicans and 
Democrats, and signed into law by a Republican President. We thought if 
we had that ability with a Republican President and a Democratic House 
and a Democratic Senate, that at least we would be able to do the same 
with a Republican House, a Republican Senate, and a Democratic 
President. We thought with a signing into law of 45 cents and 45 cents 
we would get back effectively to where we were in terms of purchasing 
power, to the purchasing power that would be available to families that 
had received the minimum wage a number of years ago, in the late 
1980's--1989, 1990--under a law signed by President Bush.
  We had the Republican leadership condemn this measure, saying they 
were unalterably opposed to the increase. Some even expressed 
opposition to any minimum wage. And we have been trying to see how we 
might be able to make that a part of the real Contract With America--
the real Contract With America: Rewarding work. Rewarding work.
  We do not need a great deal of hearings on that measure. I know I 
attended one, of the Joint Economic Committee, between the House and 
Senate. It was very interesting. The overwhelming number of independent 
studies, of 11 independent studies that reviewed the history of the 
minimum wage increase, showed no effective loss of jobs. All we have to 
do is look historically at the seven increases in the minimum wage 
since the time it had been actually implemented, and we find the same 
result. Nonetheless we have the harshness and the criticism of any 
increase, in terms of the minimum wage. So we have that out there on 
the deck for the working families.
  If you had a little scorecard you could say, all right, now let us 
also try and repeal what the President did for working families on this 
Executive order: Opposition to that. You could write underneath it: 
Opposition to the increase in the minimum wage.
  Then we come back to hearings in our Labor and Human Resources 
Committee about the repeal of the Davis-Bacon Program. All the Davis-
Bacon Program says is we are going to have a 
[[Page S3700]] prevailing wage in various Federal contracting so the 
Government will have a neutral role, in terms of wages, in terms of 
performance of various work.
  We have the assault on the Davis-Bacon Program. Who is affected by 
the Davis-Bacon Program? The worker's average income is $26,000 a year. 
What have we done to workers that are making $26,000 a year, in some of 
the most dangerous work in America? Outside of mining, construction is 
one of the two or three most dangerous employments in our country. Mr. 
President, $26,000 a year, and we are declaring war on those families.
  No, we are not going to give working families a minimum wage 
increase. No, we are not even going to give the protections for a 
family earning $26,000 a year that wants to work in construction and 
build America--no, that is too much for those individuals.
  So we say OK, we are not going to permit the President to protect 
workers on Federal contracts that are being threatened with permanent 
strike replacements, which have been part of our industrial tradition. 
We are against the minimum wage. Now we are against those workers.
  Not only are we against those workers but we have a new gimmick. We 
are having what we call 8(a)(2) of the National Labor Relations Act, to 
try to promote company unions. We are not satisfied that the working 
relationship between employers and employees is a balance. We want 
something different. Sure, we had that matter discussed by 
distinguished and thoughtful men and women on the Dunlop Commission, 
but they did not recommend a unilateral action in terms of section 
8(a)(2). They did not recommend that particular measure. They 
understood what was at risk on this measure. We have those who are 
trying to undermine even the heart and the soul of the concept of 
workers being able to come together to at least exercise their rights 
for economic gain. That is out there. So we have that on the table as 
well.
  Mr. President, all we have to do is look at what has happened to 
workers' interests over the period of the last 12 or the last 15 years. 
On the one hand you see the extraordinary rise in profits--and we are 
all thankful that we have American companies and corporations that are 
being successful and being able to compete internationally and are 
experiencing some of the greatest profits in the history of this 
country. But it is virtually flat in terms of real wages and take-home 
pay for working families. It is virtually flat, if not diminished, in 
terms of the entry-level jobs and jobs at the bottom, effectively, 65 
or 70 percent of workers who are out there. It is effectively flat or 
being reduced.
  Every day their financial interests are being assaulted out there. 
Instead of being out here on the floor of the U.S. Senate saying: Look, 
they are the men and women who are the backbone of this country, what 
can we do to try to make sure that they are going to be able to live in 
some peace and dignity and respect? We cannot even wait a few hours in 
order to tag an amendment on something which is vital to our national 
security and begin the debate to diminish them. That is what this 
debate is all about: Do not let them get ahead a little bit, in spite 
of the fact that under the previous administration, under the Bush 
administration, they issued Executive orders and those that are 
supporting this particular proposal were then silent--for example with 
regard to the prehearing agreement.
  The prehiring agreement was legal. He made it illegal. I do not want 
to hear talk about going beyond or exceeding the authority of the power 
of the President. I mean, give us a break, Mr. President, in terms of 
this measure. We know what it is about. I think the American people 
ought to understand it.
  What is it about working families? Not only their interest, but what 
is it about their children? They are trying to raise the cost of their 
children going to college, raise the cost of the interest on those 
loans while those kids are going on to the universities and colleges 
across this country, raise that $20 billion over a period of 10 years, 
raise that $20 billion so that every son and daughter of that working 
family that is hardly able to put it together is going to pay even 
more. No; do not try to find ways to try to make it easier for the sons 
and daughters to continue on and get a higher education understanding 
that what you learn is related to what you earn. Make it more 
difficult.
  This has been established as a matter of discussion and debate at the 
various Budget Committees and in the House Appropriations Committee. 
Make it more difficult. That is not bad enough. For their younger 
brothers and sisters who are going to school, they take their school 
lunch away from them. What is it about, Mr. President? What is it about 
this whole concept, whether it is the Contract With America or whatever 
it is, that is declaring war on working families? War on the children 
in terms of the kids and whether they are getting fed, or whether that 
kid may need a summer job. Eliminate all the summer jobs.
  They eliminated 13,000 summer jobs in my State of Massachusetts. 
Those summer jobs came in the wake of the Los Angeles riots. I think we 
should learn a lesson. We wanted to try to get young people at the time 
when they are not involved in school to try to get them starting to do 
something gainful such as employment. They eliminate those summer jobs.
  So they take away something that those younger brothers and sisters 
can eat and take away the employment in time of summer. Take that away. 
Cut back on the education programs. Say to the mayors of the various 
cities that are trying to do something in various areas of working 
families with their community development block grant programs, we are 
going to cut that as well. We are going to make it more difficult for 
you to try to make life somewhat better in terms of the inner cities.
  Sure, Mr. President, we have to get our handle on the costs of 
escalating Government expenditures. But my good friend from Nevada, 
Senator Reid, said it more wisely than I have heard here on the floor 
of U.S. Senate for some period of time. That is, you are never going to 
do it until you reform the health care system. You are never going to 
do it until you reform the health care system. Health care costs are 
going up at 10 or 11 percent, double the rate of inflation. It does not 
make sense just to put a cap on those Medicare and Medicaid costs 
because all you will do is transfer it to the private sector with all 
its inefficiency and back to those communities in all those cities that 
have those emergency rooms in inner cities. It is going to cause even 
more distress and poor outcomes in terms of health results as well as 
the cost of it. This is the serious matter of trying to do it.
  So, Mr. President, I see my colleagues here on the floor. I hope that 
we will have a chance to focus on precisely this amendment. I think it 
underlines some basic kinds of protections which are not going to solve 
all of the problems that we are facing in terms of working families. 
But it seems to me at some time we just have to say we have had enough. 
We have had enough in terms of the continued assault on working 
families in this country. It is only the beginning of March.
  We have only just touched very briefly on some of the measures that 
are going to affect the children. Cut back on the day care programs; 
day care programs for working families. Only about 5 or 6 percent of 
the needs are being met today, and we get a recommendation to cut back 
on those programs as well. So you are a mother. You want to go out and 
work. You are not going to be able to get any day care for your kids, 
as inadequate as it is today.
  What is this common sense? What is it about the families that have 
children in our society that are the subject and the target of this 
kind of an attitude? It makes no sense.
  This measure that we have now before us is related to that whole 
concept. It is unwise in terms of policy. It is unwise in terms of the 
interests of the workers that it is going to protect.
  I will have more to say about it later in the debate.
  I yield the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Kassebaum). The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. SIMON. Madam President, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I 
think it is not in the national interest.
  [[Page S3701]] I simply remind my colleague from Kansas, who is the 
chief sponsor of the amendment, and all of my colleagues that 
consistency is not necessarily the virtue of any of us in this body. 
But I remind my colleague from Kansas, who is now the Presiding 
Officer, that on January 6 of this year, 2 months and 3 days ago I 
introduced a resolution, a sense of the Senate--nothing nearly as 
sweeping as the Kassebaum amendment--which simply said to the 
Bridgestone/Firestone Co., a wholly owned Japanese subsidiary with 
4,200 workers, they ought to get together and have talks and not have 
the permanent replacement.
  At that point, the distinguished Senator from Kansas, who is my 
friend, with whom I enjoy working on African issues and many other 
things, said:

       I know the Senator from Illinois is well-intentioned. But 
     this is neither the time nor the place for Congress to be 
     considering anything other than this very important bill 
     which is before us. The amendment offered by the Senator from 
     Illinois is completely extraneous from the matter at hand, 
     and for that reason alone I believe the Senate should table 
     his amendment.

  If I may use the words of the Senator from Kansas, and just modify 
them slightly, I would say the amendment offered by the Senator from 
Kansas ``is completely extraneous from the matter at hand, and for that 
reason alone I believe the Senate should table her amendment.''
  Her words were heeded by this body, and by a narrow margin that 
amendment was defeated. I hope this amendment will be defeated. It is 
part of what Senator Kennedy was just talking about.
  We have a very fundamental philosophical decision to make in 
Government--whether Government is going to help the wealthy and 
powerful, or whether it is going to help those who really struggle. My 
strong belief is the wealthy and powerful do a pretty good job of 
taking care of themselves, particularly with the system of campaign 
financing that we have in this country. And what we ought to be doing 
is trying to help people who struggle. This amendment goes in the 
opposite direction.
  I point out that in the United States today only 16 percent of our 
work force is organized by labor unions. No other Western 
industrialized democracy has anywhere near that low a figure. If you 
exclude the governmental unions, that number drops down to 11.8 
percent.
  Not too long ago, George Shultz, the distinguished former Secretary 
of State and Secretary of Labor, made a speech that was quoted in the 
New York Times in which he said things are out of balance in our 
country, that the fact that labor union membership is so low, so small 
in our country, is not a healthy thing for the United States of 
America.
  I agree with him completely. I think we need greater balance. That is 
the word that ought to be part of our dialog here.
  The reality is that we had pretty good balance in labor-management 
relations over the years, since the early 1930's. When a Democrat came 
in, the National Labor Relations Board shifted a little bit on the side 
of labor, and when the Republicans came in, it would shift a little 
more on the side of management; but it was a pretty good balance. Then 
Ronald Reagan became President, and all of a sudden it got way out of 
balance. That has done real harm to labor-management relations in our 
country.
  The minimum wage that Senator Kennedy talked about is one part of 
providing a little balance. Real candidly, I think the minimum wage 
would do more in terms of welfare reform than any of the bills that I 
see before us that are labeled ``welfare reform'' right now.
  But in terms of permanent striker replacement, I mentioned 
Bridgestone/Firestone, a Japanese-owned corporation. Permanent striker 
replacement is illegal in Japan; it is illegal in Italy, it is illegal 
in Germany; it is illegal in France; it is illegal in Denmark; it is 
illegal in Norway; it is illegal in Sweden. I do not know what 
countries I have skipped now, but the only countries outside of the 
United States of America where it is legal--the only democracies where 
it is legal to fire permanent strikers are Great Britain, Hong Kong, 
and Singapore. In every other Western industrialized democracy, that 
kind of action is illegal. Traditionally, we just have not done that in 
our country. I do not think we ought to be moving down that line. I 
think the President's action provides a little balance that is needed.
  Let me add, Madam President, if this amendment is adopted, I am going 
to have a series of amendments on labor law reform. For example, if you 
have a pattern and practice of violating the civil rights laws of this 
country, you cannot get a Federal contract. I think it ought to be the 
law in this country that if you had a pattern and practice of violating 
labor laws, you should not be able to get a Federal contract. I think 
if you have a pattern and practice of violating worker safety laws, you 
should not be able to get a Federal contract.
  When you organize--in Canada, for example, if you want to organize a 
plant or site, you have 30 days in which a majority of people can--the 
30 days comes after you get the majority of people. You get a majority 
of people to sign cards and pay $1, and 30 days after that, that plant 
or site is organized. In the United States, it can draw out for 7 years 
before a plant is organized, and in the meantime, an employer, for all 
practical purposes, has the legal right to fire people for their union 
activity.
  There are a whole series of things that can be done. If this 
amendment is adopted, we are going to have other amendments in this 
area. But I would get back to the fundamental point that my colleague 
from Kansas made to me when I proposed an amendment, which was just a 
sense of the Senate and had no permanent implication, as this one does, 
when she says, ``The amendment offered by the Senator from Illinois is 
completely extraneous from the matter at hand, and for that reason 
alone, I believe the Senate should table his amendment.''
  The Senate listened to her then. I hope they will listen to her words 
now and table the amendment of the Senator from Kansas.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. JEFFORDS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Madam President, I did not expect to spend much time on 
the floor today discussing the subject of permanent striker 
replacement. As we have seen, we have had eloquent speeches by Members 
of the minority who have set forth an issue for us which was led to by 
action of the President just recently and the amendment by the Senator 
from Kansas.
  I rise in favor of that amendment. Like many of my colleagues, I 
thought we had put this issue to bed last year when both the House and 
Senate considered S. 55 and it was rejected, or never even left the 
desk in the Senate.
  President Clinton made his support of this type of legislation clear 
during the 1992 election campaign, and he and Secretary of Labor Reich 
have reaffirmed their commitment to a striker replacement bill on 
numerous occasions since. Clearly, the President would have signed a 
congressional bill if it had been laid on his desk. However, as we 
know, S. 55 never left the Senate desk.
  The President certainly is free to attempt another legislative push 
for a bill like S. 55. I would not welcome the attempt, but it would be 
well within the normal flow of our governmental process for him to do 
so.
  However, it is abnormal, unusual, and unprecedented for President 
Clinton to address this issue through the Executive order he issued 
yesterday.
  The legal arguments against the President's action are many and 
compelling. Congress has spoken consistently on this subject in the 
context of the National Labor Relations Act for over half a century.
  In 1938, the Supreme Court handed down the Mackay Radio decision 
authorizing permanent replacement of economic strikers. Since then 
Congress has considered amendments to the act several times, but it has 
never approved overturning Mackay.
  So it is important to remember this, because as we go forward and 
talk about Executive orders and the power of Executive orders, it must 
be remembered that this present law is consistent with a U.S. Supreme 
Court decision.
  An Executive order that directly contravenes the express will of 
Congress 
[[Page S3702]] calls into question significant separation of powers 
issues under the Constitution. For the past several weeks, we have 
heard very powerful arguments on the importance of this separation of 
powers in the context of the balanced budget amendment, and I expect we 
will hear more when we soon turn to consideration of the line-item 
veto.
  These arguments, while perhaps valid, are speculative. In the case of 
the Executive order in question, the challenge is clear and present. An 
Executive, frustrated by legislative inaction, is seeking to accomplish 
by Executive order what has been explicitly denied him by the 
legislatures and which is inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Court 
decision. I hope those of my colleagues who have been concerned about 
the issue of the separation of powers will see fit to support the 
Kassebaum amendment, regardless of their views on the merits of the 
legislation banning permanent replacements.
  This is not to say that the President cannot use Executive authority 
to attach conditions to parties entering into contracts with the 
Federal Government. But that power has generally been used to force or 
encourage contractors to do something that is consistent with existing 
law or policy.
  By contrast, the present order would deny contractors the right to 
take action which is authorized under the National Labor Relations Act, 
which has been upheld by the National Labor Relations Board and the 
Supreme Court, and which Congress has repeatedly refused to outlaw. 
Thus, the President's order swims upstream against the current of 
existing law and policy. In doing so, it is unprecedented and 
unsupportable.
  Legal arguments aside, perhaps the most compelling evidence on the 
weakness of this policy comes from the administration itself. We 
witnessed, or more accurately did not witness, a stealth signing 
ceremony, where partisans were invited but the press was excluded.
  In fact, the defense of the policy from the White House gives 
``weak'' a bad name. Ostensibly, the policy is designed to ensure the 
quality of products the Government procures. This is an extraordinary 
position for at least two reasons.
  First, it exhibits a total lack of faith in the Government 
procurement process. Apparently, all the administration's efforts to 
retool the procurement process have produced and Edsel, as it 
apparently will be unable to distinguish and reject faulty products in 
the absence of this Executive order. This is a very sad commentary on 
GSA, the Department of Defense, and every contracting agency.
  But even if we could believe this sad state of affairs, it belies a 
fundamental misunderstanding of the dynamics of a strike. The 
alternative to permanent replacement workers is not a happy stable of 
industrious elves, but shutdowns, shorthanded shifts staffed by 
managers and supervisory staff, of temporary replacements. It is hard 
to see how these alternatives will result in the production of 
appreciably higher quality goods or services.
  Back in the real world, the failure to meet standards would free the 
Government to contract with other providers. Future Federal contracts 
might be jeopardized as a result of failure to live up to contract 
terms. Thus, it would be a self-defeating act of the highest order for 
a contractor to put itself in this position.
  If the administration were really worried about the impact of strikes 
and permanent replacement workers on the procurement process, then it 
would condition the receipt of Federal contracts on the assurance that 
performance of the contract would not be interrupted by a strike. That 
step, and that step alone, would ensure that a trained and stable work 
force would do the work throughout the contract.
  Doing so, of course, would be a bad idea, because it would diminish 
the rights of one party to a collective bargaining agreement, it would 
reduce the pool of potential bidders and would likely increase costs to 
the Federal Government. But this description applies equally well to 
the administration's policy.
  Madam President, I think it is clear that the President's purpose is 
not to aid the cause of public procurement, but that of partisan 
politics. It is a bad idea whose time will never come.
  His action is a clear affront to the separation of powers, is of 
questionable legality, and will ill serve labor management relations 
and the taxpayers. Given all these considerations, I strongly support 
the amendment offered by the chairman of the Labor and Human Resources 
Committee, the Senator from Kansas, Senator Kassebaum, and hope that 
the vast majority of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will 
agree that this step, putting aside all of the partisan politics, is 
just ill-advised from the perception of the separation of powers and 
for good policy.
  It seems that no traditional labor law issue so galvanizes the 
actions of the interested parties as does the legislative debate on 
striker replacements. While all can agree that this issue cuts to the 
very heart of the collective bargaining relationship, there is wide 
disagreement on whether a ban of replacements would help or hurt the 
institution of collective bargaining.
  At the outset, Madam President, we need to agree on whether there is 
a problem requiring a solution before passing that solution into law or 
mandating it by Executive order. My difficulty with the President's 
order is that I am not convinced there is a problem with the hiring of 
permanent striker replacements that requires any solution, much less 
the absolute ban advocated by this Executive order. Moreover, even the 
data produced in support of similar legislation over the past several 
years are at best inconclusive on whether use of permanent replacements 
is a growing trend in the business community or that it is any more 
prevalent now than it was in the past.
  Madam President, the impetus for this Executive order is, to a large 
extent, driven by the celebrated cases where permanent replacements 
were used. Thus we have heard over the years about Eastern Airlines, 
Greyhound, the New York Daily News, and now Bridgestone-Firestone to 
name just a few. However, these and other examples of the use of 
permanent replacements do not suggest models of successful corporate 
strategies. To the contrary, many of these companies have suffered 
grinding reversals of their business fortunes, up to and including 
total business collapse, following the use of replacements. I do not 
believe that many companies will want to adopt a pattern of behavior 
which leads to such results. And again, of course, the statistics do 
not show that many have chosen to do so.
  The Clinton administration has set in motion the process of taking a 
hard look at our system of labor laws. Toward that end, a blue ribbon 
Dunlop Commission was established with the mission of studying 
workplace cooperation and recommending ways of reforming worker-
management relations to ``create an environment within which American 
business can prosper.'' That Commission has now issued its report and 
recommendations. It is significant to note that the Commission did not 
recommend the radical change in the law on replacements that the 
President's Executive order mandates.
  From the beginning of the debate on this issue, I have suggested that 
we need to open up a broad-based discussion on the way in which labor 
relations disputes are resolved. I am a supporter of the American 
system of collective bargaining and I believe, for the most part, that 
it does a good job. However, the simple truth is that system works 
better for everyone in times of economic expansion than it does in 
connection with the setbacks and retrenchment found during a recession. 
This elementary fact probably has as more to do with any increase that 
may have occurred in replacement situations than does some fanciful 
conclusion about changes in employer attitudes brought on by President 
Reagan`s handling of the air traffic controllers strike.
  I for one would be willing to explore the options which exist in the 
area of alternative dispute resolution. We do have some history on this 
issue. There are segments of the American work force where the right to 
bargain collectively does not include the right to strike. The majority 
of these are within the public sector. In those instances, various 
systems have been devised for resolving disputes on which the parties 
themselves cannot agree. Perhaps it is time to begin moving away from 
the 
[[Page S3703]] ultimate labor warfare of strikes, lockouts, and 
replacement workers and toward some alternative system of dispute 
resolution for more of the private sector.
  Madam President, this is not a new exercise that we engage in today. 
Elements found in the bill have been seen in legislative offerings at 
least as far back as the last big labor law reform effort in the 
1970's. Further, significant legislative battles have been waged on the 
issue in each of the past two Congresses. The fact that there has been 
no evolution toward consensus in the terms of this debate is a sad 
testament to our collective failure to address this issue 
realistically.
  Given the long history of the underlying issues, and the work of the 
Dunlop Commission, there are many aspects of collective bargaining that 
we might productively reexamine. For example, it troubles me that 
unfair labor practice strikers must wait so long for a resolution of 
their charges. Further, it might be profitable to examine stronger 
sanctions against those who engage in unfair labor practices. And as 
one who supported labor law reform in the late 1970's, I am certainly 
open to suggestions on ways to streamline the process of deciding 
whether or not a group of workers wishes to organize.
  With specific regard to permanent replacement of economic strikers, 
for the past few years I have stated that we should look at the special 
circumstances presented in concessionary bargaining situations and 
first contract negotiations. As I stated on the floor of the Senate 
during the 1992 debate, the situation presented by an employer's demand 
for contract give backs or concessionary bargaining demands may well be 
one in which the use of permanent replacements is not justified. 
Adoption of a restriction on this practice would address most, if not 
all of the instances of abuse presented to Congress as demonstrating 
the need for legislation on this issue.
  Similarly, in first contract negotiations, where there is no 
established bargaining relationship, I believe a third party 
intermediary could serve a useful role. Neither the Senate nor the 
House Labor Committees have examined these ideas in their handling of 
this issue. Rather, the limited amendments which the Democratic 
majority permitted to be offered in the House were persistently 
rejected, while in the Senate S. 55 remained almost defiantly unchanged 
even in the face of fatal opposition. In the current Congress, this 
issue is very low on the priority list for the committees of 
jurisdiction.
  Perhaps the biggest revolution since the Mackay decision in 1938 has 
been the shrinking of our world. We were an insular power, one of many, 
and we emerged from World War II as the greatest economic power on the 
planet. This was not surprising given that our country was spared from 
damage during the war. Nor is it surprising that our preeminence has 
eroded in the decades that followed the war as other countries have 
rebuilt and retooled.
  In 1938, we could afford to consider labor-management relations in 
isolation. In 1994, we no longer have that luxury.
  Enforcement of the present Executive order will change the face of 
labor relations in this country. Clearly that is the intent, but is it 
in the best interest of the country? That is the question. I have yet 
to hear sufficiently compelling answers to prompt me to vote for 
legislation doing what the order attempts to do. The fact that the 
President has opted to proceed by Executive order does not change my 
mind or prompt my support.
  Accordingly, while I remain open to the possibility of passing 
meaningful and wise legislation in this area, this Executive order is 
not such legislation. Thus, I will vote to stop its implementation and 
enforcement.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  (Mr. JEFFORDS assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I rise to oppose the amendment offered by the Senator 
from Kansas that would prohibit the U.S. Labor Department from 
expending funds to enforce the President's recent Executive order 
barring Federal contracts with contractors that use permanent 
replacements.
  Mr. President, I am very pleased to follow the Senator from Illinois 
and the Senator from Massachusetts, who were extremely eloquent in 
pointing out how terribly unfair this practice of the use of permanent 
replacements really is.
  The President has issued the Executive order, in my view, simply to 
restore a measure of equality to Federal labor law by guaranteeing the 
workers the right to strike without the fear of being permanently 
replaced. In this case, it relates particularly to those whose wages 
are being paid with Federal resources, being paid by Federal taxpayers' 
dollars.
  I do not think Federal resources should be used to put people out of 
work. These are people who are exercising their rights under the 
Federal labor law.
  Unfortunately, the measure of the Senator from Kansas would block the 
President's ability to protect these workers and companies that are 
Federal contractors.
  Mr. President, this would be the second time in less than a year that 
the supporters of striker replacements have used what I consider to be 
subterfuge to undermine striking workers. In the 103d Congress, the 
opposition used parliamentary tools to prevent a vote on S. 5.
  The Senator who is occupying the chair right now spoke a few moments 
ago and said he thought we had put this permanent replacement issue to 
bed. Well, in my view, we have not done that. We have not even given it 
a nap. We did not give it a chance. In fact, the American people, 
although some people did not like the outcome, elected a President in 
1992--he did get a majority of the electoral votes--who was openly and 
clearly committed to passing and signing a ban on the use of permanent 
replacement workers.
  So, no, this issue has not been put to bed. This issue has not been 
given a fair vote on the floor of the Senate and this issue has not 
gone away, regardless of the hopes of the folks who did prevail on 
November 8.
  I believe that this particular amendment does a great disservice to 
the working men and women of America. In my State of Wisconsin, the 
abusive use of permanent replacement workers by a few--not most, but by 
a few--employers during labor disputes has a pretty long history. And 
it is an issue that I have been pretty deeply concerned about for many 
years. In fact, when I was serving in the Wisconsin State senate, I was 
the author of the Wisconsin striker replacement bill and had the 
opportunity to testify before a committee of the other body here when I 
was still serving in the State Senate, asking that there be a Federal 
law banning the use of permanent replacement workers.
  But the issue has not even come close to resolution. These folks, 
trying to exercise their right, their legitimate, lawful right to 
strike, have still been harmed and undermined by the use of permanent 
replacement workers.
  Mr. President, I know that the use of permanent replacements is a 
many faceted issue. But to me at its core, this is the question that it 
raises: should workers have the right to use the strike as an economic 
device during times when negotiations with their employers break down? 
That is really the question. Because that is the issue when permanent 
replacement workers are used.
  It effectively destroys the lawful right to strike. The National 
Labor Relations Act of 1935 clearly guarantees the right of workers to 
organize and engage in concerted activities, and included in that 
series of rights is the right to strike.
  Workers and management have always shared relatively equally in the 
risks and hardships of a strike. It is no picnic for either side. 
Workers lose income and their families, and often whole communities, 
face economic insecurity and the threat of losing their homes and their 
savings. At the same time, a clear incentive has existed for management 
to come to an agreement, as they struggle to maintain production and 
productivity in their market share with a more limited work force.
  That is the relative balance that has existed in the past, prior to 
the early 1980's. Because of that balance, as a general rule, strikes 
were to be avoided by both sides, if possible, and that was the driving 
force behind the success of 
[[Page S3704]] collective bargaining and peaceful negotiations.
  For many years, even during strikes, labor and management were able 
to cooperate and come to an agreement. That is what I observed growing 
up in a very strong General Motors-UAW hometown, Janesville, WI.
  Management now often advertises--instead of negotiating, they 
advertise for permanent replacements, the moment a strike begins, 
sometimes even in advance. I have seen advertisements preparing to hire 
a nonunion force in anticipation and, in fact, in the effort to 
precipitate the strike.
  The threat of permanently lost jobs casts a pall over the entire 
bargaining process and breaks down that mutual incentive to come to a 
peaceful collective agreement. Mr. President, as the power of the 
strike becomes more and more tenuous, the voice of the labor 
negotiators over his or her employment weakens considerably.
  I do not believe, at a bare minimum, that Federal resources, Federal 
tax dollars, should be used to do more of this, to erode the power of 
working people. If the use of permanent replacements is allowed in 
federally financed work, we then become directly involved in further 
weakening the voice of the working sector of this country, or even 
maybe worse, maybe we are in the process here of silencing the voice of 
working people for good.
  It reminds me, Mr. President, of an act of kicking someone when they 
are down. I am not saying that is the intention of the Senator from 
Kansas. In fact, she is the last person in this whole body that I would 
accuse of trying to kick someone when they are down.
  I am afraid that the effect of this, the unwillingness to say the 
Federal tax dollars should not be used in order to assist the use of 
permanent replacement workers is, in fact, kicking working people when 
they are down, when they have seen many rough years, many years of 
unfair advantage to employers in management relations, many years of 
jobs being lost overseas, sometimes in the name of free trade, but 
often to the detriment of the people that have helped build this 
country.
  During disputes between employers and employees, Government should at 
the very least act to ensure that both sides are playing on a level 
playing field. The Federal Government should not act to give an 
advantage to one side or the other.
  At times, such actions in the past have given that advantage in the 
form of police protection for strikers and nonstrikers. At other times, 
in the form of court proceedings.
  I might add that employers still have many options in overcoming or 
surviving a strike. There are many things they can do, apart from this 
very harsh act of using permanent replacement workers. They can hire 
temporary employees, they can stockpile inventory in advance of a 
potential strike, or assign supervisors to take over some aspects of 
production. I know this is not a first choice. But of course neither is 
striking ever a first choice of the working people who feel compelled 
to go on strike. These options exist for the employers. They have 
always been available to employers, and they are if no way limited by 
the President's Executive order.
  Mr. President, last year the Washington Post ran an excellent 
editorial called ``Women and the Right to Strike'' which pointed out 
that as a class, women and minorities are the most in need of 
protection against the use of permanent replacements. They are 
overrepresented in low-skill low-wage jobs where it is easy to find and 
train replacements, while they are also in need of those jobs simply to 
meet the most basic necessities.
  Mr. President, I find this attempt to prevent the Executive order in 
this case to be very surprising in light of the emphasis on welfare 
reform that has come through as a very important part of the so-called 
Republican contract. The notion of welfare reform, which I agree with, 
is that if somebody can work they should work.
  If we are going to pass some important legislation this year to make 
that much more likely, what is the message of this amendment to those 
who are being encouraged to go to work? The message is, you will lose 
your welfare benefits, you will leave your children and go to work, you 
will not necessarily be guaranteed health care. As we know, we do not 
have universal coverage. We have universal coverage for the people on 
welfare, but not necessarily for those who work.
  So this is the message that the new majority wants to give to people 
on welfare who want to go to work. Go to work, for maybe the same 
amount, maybe a little more, and you may have your jobs torn away from 
you in a very short period of time by the use of permanent replacement 
workers. No job security. No meaningful right to strike. It is the 
worst message we can possibly send to those people who are genuinely 
striving to leave welfare.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President will the Senator yield?
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I am happy to yield to the Senator from 
Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I gather from what the Senator has just said that he 
is trying to make a connection between welfare reform and welfare 
recipients--who are, in the main, women, single parents--being able to 
find a job they can count on. With ``a job you can count on'' meaning a 
decent wage with decent fringe benefits.
  In the State of Wisconsin, has the Senator seen situations where 
workers have been essentially forced out on the strike and permanently 
replaced? Has the Senator actually seen that happen in Wisconsin? Can 
the Senator give, so that people know what this debate is about, are 
there some examples that come to mind, as a Senator from Wisconsin?
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I thank the Senator from Minnesota for his question.
  Mr. President, in response to the question, have we seen this happen 
in Wisconsin, the answer I am sorry to say is yes. Increasingly, 
through the 1980's and early 1990's, there were systematic efforts in 
certain places to use permanent replacement workers.
  Among the ones that stick out is what happened to people in De Pere, 
WI, when International Paper chose to use permanent replacement 
workers. I held a hearing as a State senator, at the time, and heard 
some of the most compelling and troubling testimony I have ever heard 
as an elected representative from families that were broken by the loss 
of that job security that the Senator has described. In fact, I am 
quite sure that some of those folks were forced from being workers to 
being on welfare, as a result.
  I saw the same thing near Milwaukee, in Cudahy, WI, another very 
tense, and difficult, public hearing when the story of that situation 
was laid out. Closer to my own home in Madison, WI, a lot of pain, a 
lot of hurt, and a lot of destruction of family--another value that the 
new majority likes to talk about.
  In the context of the Stoughton Trailer strike involving UAW workers, 
I always like to say my very first political encounter as a kid was 
when my father took me down to the UAW plants in Janesville to the 
Walter Reuther Hall. I remember that the gatherings there, there were a 
lot of Democrats there, there were Republicans there, too, in those 
days. It was not necessarily a partisan issue. It was pretty good 
spirit there in the 1960's. But when I returned in 1988, to that same 
hall, it was not an upbeat spirit. It reminded me of a wake, because 
people felt absolutely dejected and abandoned because of the use of 
permanent replacement workers. We have had it all over the place.
  I want to reiterate to my friend from Minnesota, Mr. President, it is 
a small percentage of the employers, but, unfortunately, sometimes it 
is some of the biggest employers. Sometimes it is some of the best 
jobs. And it cuts at the heart of the feeling that we want to be able 
to give people that if they do a good job for a company and come to 
work on time and produce a good product, they should be able to keep 
that job, generally speaking.
  That is something that has to be as much a part of the American dream 
as home ownership or little league baseball.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield for another question?
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I am happy to yield.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this Executive order really applies, as 
I understand it, to Government agencies that work with contractors with 
contracts of $100,000, or more, and only in 
[[Page S3705]] cases where those contractors permanently replace 
striking workers, not temporarily replace, then the Government would no 
longer be willing to continue with the contract. Is that correct?
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, that is my understanding. It is not as 
extensive as the kind of law I would like to see passed.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. And ultimately this would affect very, very, few 
companies because we have no reason to believe that most of the 
contractors doing business with the Government would engage in such a 
practice.
  So my question is as follows: This debate now on this amendment 
almost becomes a debate about more than just this aim of the Senator 
was talking about welfare and the reports of welfare reform with jobs 
being key.
  Does the Senator, based upon your experience in Wisconsin, does the 
Senator feel that this whole issue of permanent replacement of striking 
workers is key to the question of balance between labor and management 
so that people, working people in the country, whether they are in 
unions or not in unions, will have the ability to represent themselves 
and bargain and have a decent job at a decent wage for their family?
  Has this amendment become really more of a debate about decent jobs 
for people, more of a debate about families having an income that they 
can live on, more of a debate about really working families and middle-
class families; is that the way the Senator sees this?
  Mr. FEINGOLD. In response to the question of the Senator from 
Minnesota, it almost has to become a broader debate. I do not believe 
it was the intent of the Senator from Kansas to have it be. I do not 
know how you can talk about just the narrow issue of particular 
companies, and I think the Senator from Minnesota is right that there 
maybe is not going to be Federal money to do this. But it does bring up 
the whole issue of what kind of consistency is there between this sort 
of amendment and the agenda that we have been talking about in this 
Congress and will talk about having to do with getting people to work.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. I wonder if the Senator from Wisconsin will yield to 
me for a moment for a question? Going back to a question between the 
Senator from Minnesota and the Senator from Wisconsin a minute ago.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I will be happy to.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. First, you implied this Executive order would not 
affect very many companies, that it will only touch on a few Federal 
contractors. I notice there is some confusion about this that maybe you 
can clarify.
  There has been some question as to whether it would or would not 
affect the Bridgestone/Firestone strike for which, of course, there 
have been permanent replacement workers. For all intents and purposes, 
it has been thought that this Executive order was only proactive, not 
reactive. It states:

       The provisions of section 3 of this order shall only apply 
     to situations in which contractors have permanently replaced 
     lawfully striking employees after the effective date of this 
     order.

  In section 3, there is some confusion. It says:

       When the Secretary determines that a contractor has 
     permanently replaced lawfully striking employees, the 
     Secretary may debar the contractor, thereby making the 
     contractor ineligible to receive Government contracts.

  So I think it could be read that the Secretary of Labor could, as a 
matter of fact, go back and say that if there were permanent 
replacement workers, then the contractor could be debarred from Federal 
contracts. This places us, of course, right in the middle of a major 
management/labor dispute. One which, of course, is taking a real toll.
  I would like to ask the Senator from Wisconsin, who has the floor, if 
he knows what the clarification may be? I think this could cause real 
confusion.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. I defer to the Senator from Minnesota on that 
particular aspect, except to say when the Senator from Minnesota asked 
me how many firms do I think this would apply to, my saying I did not 
think it would apply to many firms was to the fact that I hope and 
believe most firms would not do this.
  If this, in fact, does apply to the current situation you refer to, 
it would not trouble me. I am not going to represent what exactly that 
language does. I am happy to take a look at it. My view is that use of 
permanent replacement workers in any context where Federal dollars are 
involved should not be permitted.
  That is what I would want it to be, but I did not, of course, draft 
the Executive order, and I would have to defer to the Senator from 
Minnesota if he knows the specific answer.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Kansas for her 
question. The President's Executive order would cover them, but the 
existing contract could not be terminated. It is my understanding that 
they would be barred from future contracts, and that is the 
distinction. I think that is the purpose of this Executive order.
  I might also add that when I asked the question of the Senator from 
Wisconsin, my working assumption--which I think is a correct one--is 
that ultimately we are talking about what kind of companies might, in 
fact, engage in this practice, because the Senator from Wisconsin is 
correct; most companies are good corporate citizens and good businesses 
and do not engage in this practice. Probably we are talking about very 
few cases.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, I appreciate the answer. I think it is 
still very unclear, and I think it indicates why there would be a lot 
of uncertainty about this Executive order. I appreciate the answer.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, if I may conclude, I know the Senator 
from Minnesota wishes to speak.
  The senior Senator from Massachusetts referred to the people who 
would be affected by the use of permanent replacement workers as the 
backbone of our country. That is exactly what they are. They are not 
the people who so many people like to rail against who are not willing 
to work who can work; these are people who work, who have worked hard, 
who report to work every day, many of whom have to have both parents 
working to make ends meet. They are trying awfully hard to make it. All 
they want is to know that this country, whether it be a Democrat 
majority or a Republican majority, is committed to helping them get to 
work and have a job and make an honest living.
  I thought that is what this whole welfare debate is about; that 
everybody is better off if they are working and that if they are not 
working, they are taking advantage of the rest of us. That is what I 
thought it was about. I thought that is why so many working people are 
frustrated and irritated by our current welfare system.
  What kind of a mixed message is it to kick people who are working and 
not guarantee them the right to strike at the same time you tell them 
get back to work and help us out in this society by working and paying 
your taxes and make our economy go? It does not add up.
  This Republican agenda is contradictory. Are we for deficit 
reduction, or are we for tax cuts? Are we for getting people back to 
work, or are we for driving people out of work by the use of permanent 
replacement workers? Which one is it? Where is the sense of community? 
Where is the sense of helping somebody when they are down? Where is the 
sense of making sure that if somebody is really trying to work, that we 
will do whatever we can to make sure that that job has some stability, 
has decent wages, some rights, some health insurance. Which is it?
  I believe that every Member of this body is committed to those 
principles in their heart, but when you look at the agenda and the way 
that it works at cross-purposes with an amendment like this, it is 
very, very troubling; and it is hard for me to tell the hardworking 
people in Wisconsin, those who are part of organized labor, in 
particular, that you really mean it, that you really mean it when you 
say you want people to work. If you want them to work, give them a fair 
chance to have a balance to keep those jobs when the management is 
being unfair.
  Mr. President, I strongly oppose the Kassebaum amendment for the 
reasons I have outlined. I encourage my colleagues to vote against it.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota is recognized.
  [[Page S3706]] Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair. I thank my colleague 
from Wisconsin for his strong words on the floor.
  Mr. President, I could read from my prepared statement. I think I 
would rather not. I just would like to try to lay out, if you will, the 
basis of my position and marshal evidence. I think that it is very 
important that the U.S. Government not be on the side of contractors 
who have permanently replaced their workers who have gone out on 
strike.
  Let me say one more time, as I understand this Executive order, if 
the Secretary of Labor issues such a ruling and it is clear that a 
contractor with a $100,000-or-more contract has, in fact, permanently 
replaced striking workers, then that company could be barred from 
future contracts after the careful, deliberative process set forth in 
the order is exhausted. I think that is the key clarification.
  I think that this Executive order is very important. I do not think 
it is very important so much because, in fact, it will end up covering 
that many businesses.
 I think it will be rather narrow in scope, but I think it is important 
that the Government be on the side of what I would call basic economic 
justice.

  A word on the context, Mr. President. In the early 1980's, there was 
the PATCO strike, and many striking air traffic controllers were 
permanently replaced. I think what has happened-- and I wish this was 
not the case, and maybe it had something to do with the mergers that 
took place in the 1980's, maybe it had something to do with different 
hard-nosed management approaches--but what happened really, with the 
PATCO strike I think being the triggering event, is that we moved into 
a different era of labor/management relations wherein the implicit 
contract between workers and management was torn up.
  In addition, I would argue that in the international economic order--
and the Senator from Illinois was quite correct when he said the United 
States almost stands alone among advanced economies without having some 
protection for a work force against being permanently replaced--I think 
the key for our country is going to be a trained, literate, high-
morale, productive work force.
  I know the Senator from Kansas agrees because I have seen her work 
and admire her work in promoting this.
  I think the disagreement we have is that when people can essentially 
be crushed--and I have seen too many people who have been crushed in my 
State of Minnesota--when they go out on strike because they feel they 
have no other recourse but to do so, it leads to just the opposite of 
what we need when it comes to real labor/management cooperation.
  The process is fairly simple, and I wish I did not have to identify 
this process. It is not an invention on my part. Too often, companies--
I am very pleased to say not most companies, not most businesses--
provoke strikes as part of a plan to replace striking workers and bust 
unions. And this is a relatively small number of rogue employers. I 
think, in fact, many businesses would greatly benefit from this reform 
because they are not the real culprits here. But too often, certain 
employers will force a unionized work force out on strike, permanently 
replace them, then move to have the union decertified. That is union-
busting, plain and simple.
  Now, Mr. President, it could very well be that part of this debate 
about this amendment--although I think the Senator from Kansas can 
speak for herself better than I ever could; I do not actually think 
this is her framework--but as I see it, as I analyze the votes on this 
amendment and this question, at least some of the votes, some of the 
votes are going to really have to do with the larger question than this 
amendment.
  The larger question than this amendment is this Contract With 
America--I think it is more a con than a contract--that we see being 
pushed forward with a vengeance in the House of Representatives. The 
connection I make is that I think what we see happening right now--and 
it is why I come to the floor feeling so strongly about this amendment, 
because of this larger context--is an effort on the part of some of the 
leadership in the House to overturn 60 years of people's history. I 
actually do not think that this ``Contract With America'' is an attack 
on the 1960's. It is an attack on the basic reforms put in place in the 
thirties, which have served us well for decades.
  Now, Mr. President, some of us, or some of our parents--in my case, I 
guess it was my grandparents--gave a lot of sweat and tears to make 
sure that in the 1930's we moved forward as a Nation with some 
protection for people against strikebreaking, some protection against 
the fear of being unemployed, some protection against jobs that paid 
wages on which people could not support their families. This is when we 
protected in law the right to form or join a union. This is when we 
developed some of our collective bargaining machinery. This is when we 
passed minimum wage legislation. This is when we passed Social 
Security. This is when, Mr. President, if we want to talk about 
contracts, we actually built a contract in the United States of America 
the purpose of which was a more just system of economic relationships 
for people.
  But, more importantly, I think it was a huge step toward greater 
stability in the workplace, and toward greater fairness. We no longer 
said if you own your own large corporation and you are powerful, then 
you matter, but if you are a working family, you do not. This was an 
important contract.
  Quite frankly, Mr. President, I see a real effort in the Congress, 
especially on the House side, to rip this contract up.
  Mr. President, there are an estimated 14,000 workers that are covered 
by the NLRA that are permanently replaced each year by American 
employers and thousands more under the Railway Labor Act.
  Now, there was a report done by the General Accounting Office in 
January 1991--and maybe there is a more recent report. I think all of 
us agree that GAO does very rigorous work, and in this report the GAO 
indicates that since 1985, employers have hired permanent replacements 
in one out of every six strikes and threatened to hire replacements in 
one out of every three.
  Mr. President, the right to strike has become the right to be fired. 
You could, if you wanted to, just travel around the United States, and 
in State after State you could talk to priests, ministers, rabbis, 
mayors, small business people, union people, and others affected by 
long and bitter strikes that divided communities all too often 
precipitated by the use of outside replacements.
  In my State of Minnesota, I could give many, many examples of men and 
women who essentially were forced out on strike. Nobody goes out on 
strike on a lark. But they were faced with a package of concessions 
that they could not make in terms of their own economic situation and 
their basic dignity. The companies knew they could do it to them. The 
companies wanted them out on strike. The companies then permanently 
replaced them and then decertified them. That is union busting.
  Now, I think this Executive order just simply says that the U.S. 
Government will not be on the side of union busting. This Executive 
order--and again, that is why I think it is such an important issue 
that goes beyond this Executive order--says that the U.S. Government 
will be on the side of working families, that the U.S. Government will 
be on the side of collective bargaining rights, that the U.S. 
Government will be on the side of the right to strike, and that the 
U.S. Government takes the position that the right to strike should not 
become the right to be fired.
  I do not know how many of my colleagues--maybe many or maybe very 
few--have actually visited with families who have essentially been 
wiped out because the husband or the wife or both were permanently 
replaced. I have. And I do not say ``I have'' to suggest that I care 
more about working people than anyone else. Many Senators do. We reach 
different conclusions, sometimes, as to the best way to support 
families.
  But I have seen, and I will say this to my colleague from Kansas--I 
have seen too many broken dreams and broken lives and broken families, 
all caused by permanently replacing men and women. It is just 
shattering.
  [[Page S3707]] I will say this to my colleague from Kansas, I will, 
with every ounce of strength I have as a U.S. Senator, fight to end 
this practice. That is why this amendment assumes a larger importance 
than this amendment. That is why this amendment assumes a larger 
importance, and that is why this amendment must be stopped.
  There were many of us--one is no longer here on the floor of the 
Senate because he retired, certainly he was one of my mentors, Senator 
Metzenbaum from Ohio--who fought and fought and fought for change. S. 
55 would have been the change. That would have prohibited employers--I 
am not talking about just contractors with the Government--from 
permanently replacing striking workers. It was filibustered. Let me 
repeat that one more time. It was filibustered.
  I remember meeting--I think Sheila came out with me--on a Sunday 
morning in Minnesota with a group of workers who had been permanently 
replaced. They were outside with their families. It was raining. 
Certainly there were as many women as men who worked for this company. 
I remember saying to them: I really have some hope that we will be able 
to pass this legislation.
  I do not think they thought that meant they would get their jobs 
back. But it represented some real hope for them, because they had been 
very courageous. What this company asked of these workers, I say to my 
colleague from Kansas, was unacceptable. I do not think there is a 
Senator here who would have been able to have accepted those terms.
  They went out on strike. They were scared to death. They knew they 
probably were going to lose their jobs, but it was a matter of dignity. 
You know, dignity is important to people.
  I said: We have this piece of legislation and I believe the United 
States of America is going to join the other advanced economies by 
providing some protection for working people, working families. But we 
could not get a vote on it. It was filibustered.
  Mr. President, now we come to this amendment by my good friend from 
Kansas, which is an attempt to effectively overturn the President's 
Executive order. The Executive order, which sends I think a very, very 
important and positive message to people in this country, which is that 
the Government is not going to be on the side of companies that 
permanently replace workers, companies that quite often force people 
out on strike, in keeping with a typical pattern--forcing people out on 
strike when people cannot accept these concessions which are 
unreasonable; then bringing in permanent replacements; then 
decertifying the union; and then busting the union. The U.S. Government 
will not be on the side of union busting.
  I think this amendment also brings into focus on the floor of the 
U.S. Senate a whole question of this Contract With America. I believe 
that. I do not think that is the intent of the Senator from Kansas, but 
that is why I feel so strongly about this debate, about this amendment.
  I say to my colleague from Wisconsin, what is now going on--actually 
legislation that is being passed on the floor of the House of 
Representatives--is beyond the goodness of people in this country. It 
is mean-spirited, because it targets the citizens who are the most 
politically vulnerable and who have the least political clout. That is 
why I have come out with this amendment on children over and over, 
which the Chair voted for and my colleague from Wisconsin voted for, to 
get the Senate on record in favor of ensuring that nothing we do this 
year will create more hungry or homeless children.
  When I first came out with this amendment at the beginning of the 
session, a sense-of-the-Senate amendment, there were some colleagues 
who thought this is just symbolic. Some people said this is just 
politics. But, my gosh, look at what has happened on the House side, 
and what is coming over here to the Senate. We can see what is 
happening to the school lunch program, the school breakfast program, 
nutritional programs, the child care centers. Look at the headlines 
every day. The other day on the floor of the Senate I observed: Here is 
a front page Washington Post piece with a title, not ``Can Johnny 
Read?'' but ``Can Johnny eat?'' And you begin to wonder. This is not 
the America we know.
  I insist that this debate is all about families. I know my colleague 
has a question and I will be pleased to yield, but if I can just make 
this last point. I think, whether we are talking about nutrition 
programs and children, whether we are talking about Pell grants, or 
low-interest loans for higher education; whether we are talking about 
affordable health care or whether we are talking about minimum wage; or 
the Small Business Administration--guaranteed loan programs, 8-A loan 
programs and the like--or whether we are talking about jobs, jobs that 
families can count on, jobs that pay a decent wage with decent fringe 
benefits--that is the core question here.
  On this question I think the administration is in the right. I think 
this Executive order is extremely important and ultimately it gets down 
to the question, to quote an old song, ``Which Side Are You On?'' It 
happens to be an old labor song sung by Florence Reece--``Which Side 
Are You On?'' Which side is the Government on? Is the Government on the 
side of companies that permanently replace workers, that crush workers? 
Or is the U.S. Government, the Government of the United States of 
America, on the side of working people and working families?
  I want to continue to speak but if the Senator has a question I will 
yield.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, no, I do not. I would simply, though, 
make a statement. This is not about the Contract With America. This is 
not about whose side one is on. I would say to the Senator from 
Wisconsin, what this is about is the ability of the President, by an 
Executive order, to change the labor law of the land which has existed 
for 60 years.
  The debate on whether to have a permanent replacement of workers can 
come at a different time. I am sure it will. It has through the past 
two Congresses. But that is what troubles me--and I know the Senator 
from Wisconsin has the floor. It is not a question so much as to state 
indeed what this debate is about.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Kansas that 
I respectfully disagree. The reason I say that is I do not believe that 
we can decontextualize this amendment proposed by my colleague from the 
reality of the agenda that is being pushed by the Republican Party in 
this 104th Congress. I believe all of the parts are interrelated. That 
is the way I view this amendment. I view this as being connected to all 
these other questions. Is there going to be adequate nutrition for 
children? Whatever happened to affordable health care? Are people going 
to be able to afford higher education? How come the proposed cuts are 
so targeted, as Marian Wright Edelman and others have said over and 
over again, on the most vulnerable citizens? Why are we not willing to 
raise the minimum wage? And what are we doing, coming out with an 
amendment that essentially tries to undo an Executive order that only 
says the U.S. Government ought not to be supporting companies that 
permanently replace workers,
 given, I think, a rather bleak and shameful history of the last decade 
or so as to what has actually been happening to working people in this 
country?

  So I say to my colleague, I respectfully disagree.
  Does my colleague have a question?
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. No. I will respond when the Senator from Minnesota 
yields the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague.
  Mr. President, I know the Senator from Iowa will be here in a moment. 
I will be pleased to yield the floor to my colleague from Iowa.
  Mr. President, I would like to just quote from page 1 of a General 
Accounting Office report published a few years ago on striker 
replacement in the last 20 years. It is a summary to give some context 
for my remarks and my response to the Senator from Kansas.

       The number of strikes in the United States during the 
     1980's was about one half what it was during the 1970's. More 
     specifically, strikes declined about 53 percent in the 1980's 
     compared with the 1970's. They estimate that in strikes 
     reported to the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in 
     1985 and 1989, employers announced they would hire permanent 
     replacements in about one-third of the 
     [[Page S3708]] strikes in both years and hired them in about 
     17 percent of all strikes in each year. They generally found 
     little difference in the use of permanent replacements by 
     employers in large force strikes.

  Mr. President, is this Executive order meeting a real need? Yes. Is 
there a precedent for it? Yes--ample precedent.
  One more time I say to my colleagues that I believe there is a larger 
significance to this amendment than may originally be apparent. This 
amendment goes to the very question of workplace fairness. This 
amendment goes to the very heart of the Contract on America's assault 
on working families' ability to rely on jobs that pay decent wages with 
decent fringe benefits. This amendment is an attempt to undo an 
Executive order, I think, which is narrow in scope and which makes it 
clear that the Federal Government will not be on the side of companies 
which permanently replace striking workers. The Federal Government will 
not be on the side of union busting. The Federal Government will not, 
through taxpayers' money, support unfairness in the workplace. The 
Federal Government will side with regular working people. The Federal 
Government will side with working families.
  And while I believe that this Executive order represents a lawful 
exercise of Presidential authority, I think it also represents 
something more. It represents a commitment by the President of the 
United States of America to many, many, many working families in our 
country.
  Please remember, when I say working families, I mean union and 
nonunion, I mean the vast majority of people in this country who in 
fact are employed.
  At this point, Mr. President, if the Senator from Kansas does not 
have a question for me, I yield the floor.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWine). The Senator from Kansas.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, I want to respond to several things 
that have come up during the course of the debate this morning.
  First, this amendment is not an effort to embarrass the President.
  Second, I feel strongly that this Executive order sets a precedent 
that we need to carefully examine.
  Third, we all care about justice in the workplace and for the 
workers. But it has been stated that this Executive order will actually 
restore the balance. That through this Executive order there will be 
balance that then will be maintained between management and labor. I 
argue that actually it will totally unbalance the labor/management 
relationship which has existed over 60 years under our Federal labor 
laws.
  Sometimes it has been abused by management. Sometimes it has been 
abused by labor. It was stated that if management can hire permanent 
replacement workers, then it would be very unfair to the strikers. Why 
would, indeed, strikers not be able to have any voice at that point? 
Strikes have continued on, and at great loss to those who were 
striking, where permanent replacement workers have been hired. However, 
if you were to forbid any permanent replacement workers, then strikes 
could continue on forever and the workplace could be totally shut down. 
A business could be totally shut down. Leverage has to be equal on both 
sides.
  I suggest that when discussing this Executive order it is very murky 
to talk about either Caterpillar or Bridgestone/Firestone because at 
some point large companies, in fact many companies large or small, have 
Federal contracts. This would say, if indeed a strike is ongoing--which 
Bridgestone/Firestone is--and there have been permanent workers hired, 
it does apply to them.
  So I suggest the Executive order will not restore the balance between 
labor and management. It actually undermines it. This is not a debate 
about the minimum wage. This is not a debate about Davis-Bacon. This is 
not a debate about school lunches or child care or welfare reform--all 
the things that have come into play. It is indeed not about any of 
these.
  I suggest to the Senator from Minnesota, because he cares 
passionately about this, that there could be a time when a Republican 
President could issue an Executive order banning all strikes. If you 
start down this slippery slope of totally disregarding labor law, the 
legislative authority to enact law, this could happen. Where authority 
to shape labor law should be is in the halls of Congress where it is 
determined through legislation.
  There has been much talk here about President Reagan and President 
Bush by Executive order having done the same thing.
  If I may, I will just go through this again. The Bush administration 
did issue an Executive order requiring Federal contractors to post a 
notice informing workers of their rights under Federal labor law. That 
is a given. That was not, in any way, changing labor law.
  President Reagan, when air traffic controllers went on an illegal 
strike, did replace those striking workers with permanent replacement 
workers. There was legislation that followed in both the House and 
Senate wanting reinstatement of those fired air traffic controllers 
after a certain period of time, but this legislation did not pass. And 
that is why we get to the third one, Mr. President, which I suggest 
might be a little murkier--and I listened to Senator Kennedy's 
arguments regarding the prehire agreements.
  There are some, in fact, who believe that President Bush's Executive 
order was illegal although it was never challenged in court. It could 
have been challenged, just as I assume this Executive order will be 
challenged. Unlike the case of the prehire agreement Executive order, 
we are currently faced with a situation where Congress has declined to 
change the law for more than 60 years. I argue that this striker 
replacement Executive order has far broader implications. If we 
continue down what I have said is a slippery slope, I fear we may see 
future administrations that will then be trying to limit not only the 
rights of management but the rights of workers as well.
  This is not the way we should determine major labor law--by an 
Executive order. I share many of the sympathies that have been 
expressed by either the Senator from Wisconsin or the Senator from 
Minnesota about the desire to see stability in the workplace, the 
desire for good wages, the desire for those who are working today to 
know they have a future in that workplace instead of uncertainty from 
month to month, if not year to year. But this is not the answer. And I 
suggest, Mr. President, that it creates an imbalance that will cause 
greater uncertainty in the workplace and greater instability in the 
workplace, not less.
  As we look to the future of trade, productivity, and competition, we 
want to be able to be partners with both labor and management and try 
to realize a stable and productive workplace. But through this 
Executive order, we have undermined, I think, and further eroded a 
sense of trust and a responsibility that should exist between labor and 
management.
  If we tie one hand behind management's back, or if someone finds a 
way to tie one hand behind labor's back, we have created imbalance. Who 
is to say what issue is fair or unfair? It cannot be done here. Many of 
us argue this about the baseball strike. We have said that Congress 
should not intervene in these strikes. There must be some credence 
given to the bargaining table, where management and labor have to come 
together, I hope, for the best interests of both sides.
  That is what this argument is about. It is not about the Contract 
With America and all of these other extraneous issues. It is about an 
Executive order that takes away the rights of Congress to, by 
legislation, enact or reject legislation--in this case, affecting labor 
law, which has always been our prerogative.
  We can have the debate once again on permanent replacement for 
striking workers at another time and in another forum. But this debate 
is simply about an Executive order. The reason I add it as an amendment 
to the defense supplemental is that many of those who have worked with 
defense contracts are the very workers and businesses that could well 
be affected by this Executive order.
  That is why it seems to me to fit on the defense supplemental 
legislation before us today. I do not think there needs to be extended 
debate because I believe we all know what the issue at hand is and how 
we feel. I would be happy to enter into a time agreement. 
[[Page S3709]] I would be happy to have the vote in a limited amount of 
time, and stand willing to do so, Mr. President, if that will be agreed 
to by the other side of the aisle.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, first of all, I want to make it clear 
that when it comes to time agreements--and I think this is a sort of 
fundamental difference we have. This is a central, central, central 
question. One more time, I say, with all due respect to my colleague 
from Kansas, first, I think the significance of this amendment goes 
beyond the Executive order. I think it cannot be contextualized to what 
I consider to be really sort of assault on working families and middle-
income families in America.
  Second, I choose to define the issue differently. Each Senator has to 
make his or her own decision. But I believe this is a question of 
whether or not the Federal Government will be on the side of a practice 
which, unfortunately, has become all too common during the decade of 
the 1980's and early 1990's, which is essentially demanding concessions 
of a work force that you know they cannot make, forcing them out on 
strike, hiring permanent replacements, decertifying the union, and 
busting the union.
  So the question is, is the Government of the United States of America 
going to use taxpayer dollars to encourage that practice, to be on the 
side of that kind of practice--the practice of union busting, of 
breaking unions, of driving many, many honest, hardworking people 
essentially out of work because they are replaced? I do not think so. I 
think it is a question of where the Government stands. This Executive 
order says we ought to have a Government that stands on the side of 
workplace fairness.
  Actually, I heard my colleague from Illinois say earlier that this is 
but the beginning of what we should have done, which was S. 55, which 
joined all of the other advanced economies with legislation to prohibit 
this egregious practice. We would be so much better off--I will not 
repeat all of the arguments I made earlier--in terms of productivity 
and labor-management partnerships, and in terms of higher levels of 
morale.
  I ask my colleague from Illinois whether it is his intention to speak 
on the floor.
  Mr. SIMON. No.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Well, let me finish my remarks. I am expecting the 
Senator from Iowa to be here in a moment.
  Let me just clear up this interpretation on Bridgestone-Firestone. 
Negotiations between Bridgestone-Firestone and the United Rubber 
Workers began in March of 1994, and the collective bargaining agreement 
expired on April 24, 1994. The United Rubber Workers called the strike 
against Bridgestone-Firestone on July 12, 1994. If the Executive order 
had been in effect, Secretary Reich would have intervened immediately 
by notifying the company that any effort to permanently replace its 
workers could cause Bridgestone-Firestone to suffer immediate 
termination of several million dollars worth of contracts it has with 
the Federal Government. This action might have been enough to persuade 
Bridgestone-Firestone not to permanently replace the strikers.
  On January 4, 1995, Bridgestone-Firestone permanently replaced 2,300 
striking workers, without any warning, by sending letters to the 
strikers at their home. If the Executive order had been in effect, 
Secretary Reich could have immediately investigated and made a finding 
that the company violated the policy in the Executive order, that the 
executive branch will not contract with employers who permanently 
replace striking workers, and notified all of the agencies that have 
contracts with Bridgestone-Firestone that they should terminate their 
contract. These agencies would have terminated the contracts, again 
putting pressure on Bridgestone-Firestone to attempt a reasonable 
settlement of the strike--the same kind of pressure that the strikers 
were under, I might add--at the time.
  It also says, ``The Secretary of Labor may pursue a debarment action 
against Bridgestone/Firestone after the executive order takes effect. 
The debarment would block Bridgestone/Firestone from getting any new 
Federal contracts''--any new Federal contracts-- ``until its labor 
dispute is settled.''
  The language is very clear. The interpretation is very clear.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor to my colleague from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I very strongly oppose the amendment 
offered by the Senator from Kansas. Instead of passing this amendment, 
we should be saluting the leadership of President Clinton in providing 
a good degree of protection for workers that Congress failed to protect 
last year in the striker replacement bill.
  American workers and companies doing business of over $100,000 with 
the Federal Government can finally be assured that they will not be 
permanently replaced if they go out on a strike. While that represents 
only 10 percent of all contracts, this order will affect 90 percent of 
Federal contract dollars.
  Over the past decade, a worker's right to strike has too often been 
undermined by the destructive practice of hiring permanent replacement 
workers. Workers deserve better. Workers are not disposable assets that 
can be thrown away when labor disputes arise.
  When we were considering the striker replacement bill last year, the 
Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources heard poignant testimony 
about the emotional and financial hardships that are caused by the 
hiring of permanent replacement workers. We heard of workers losing 
their homes, going without health insurance due to the cost of COBRA 
coverage, as well as the feelings of uselessness that workers often 
feel when they are permanently replaced after years of loyal and 
efficient service.
  The right to strike, as we all know, is an action taken as a last 
resort, for no worker takes the financial risks of a strike lightly. I 
have never, in all my years, met one worker who would rather be on 
strike than he would be in the plant working. The right to strike is, 
however, fundamental to preserving a worker's right to bargain for 
better wages and better working conditions.
  I challenge those who say they support the Wagner Act, and the right 
of collective bargaining, and yet say that if workers go out on a legal 
strike, that company can permanently replace them. In essence, that 
position means that there really is no right to strike; there is only a 
right to go out and be replaced.
  And if there is no right to strike, then there is no right to 
collective bargaining. Because there is only one thing and one thing 
alone that the worker brings to the bargaining table and that is his or 
her labor. They do not have money to bring to the table. They do not 
have contracts. If they cannot withhold that labor, then there is no 
real effective bargaining position for labor. Then they are going to 
have to take exactly what management wants. If they do not take what 
management wants, then they can go out and strike, but then management 
says, ``We will bring in permanent replacements: you are done and you 
are out the door.''
  So what we have in America today is no right to collective 
bargaining. It is a sham, a phony right.
  The kind of rights that workers enjoy in other capitalist societies, 
whether it is Great Britain or France, all over Europe or even in 
Japan--and I will have more to say about Bridgestone--workers there do 
indeed have the right to strike, and they cannot be permanently 
replaced.
  So only in America, the bastion of free labor, the country that gave 
the world the kind of laws under which labor can exert its legitimate 
rights and bargaining rights, this country has now taken a step 
backward of saying, 
[[Page S3710]] ``No, there is no more right to collective bargaining in 
this country.''
  Recent studies have shown that the stagnation we have seen in middle-
class standards of living is closely correlated with the decline of 
unions and the loss of meaningful bargaining power. A Harvard 
University study showed that blue-collar incomes have dropped in 
constant dollars from $12.76 an hour in 1979, down to only $11.51, a 
drop of almost 10 percent. If unions represented just 25 percent of the 
work force, that wage would be nearly $12 per hour.
  At the same time, workers are losing the benefits that unions were 
able to negotiate. Since 1981, fewer workers have health insurance, 
pensions, paid vacations, paid rest time, paid holidays, and other 
benefits. Without the bargaining power of a union, companies provide 
these benefits only out of the goodness of their hearts. Without the 
right to strike, a right that is theoretically guaranteed by law but 
that is in fact totally undermined by permanent replacements, workers 
have virtually no bargaining power left.
  The right to replace workers is insidious. If one employer in an 
industry chooses to cut costs by breaking the union and cutting the 
workers' salaries and benefits and dignity, then all the other 
companies in that industry are faced with having to compete against a 
cut-rate, cutthroat business, or they are going to have to follow suit.
  A company has to respond to its shareholders. It cannot be beat by 
the company that treated its workers shabbily. So, since it has to 
respond to its board of directors and the shareholders, they follow 
suit. It is insidious. It is like dominoes. One company starts it, 
other companies have to follow suit or they are going to lose market 
share.
  Workers faced with being replaced have to make the choice of staying 
with the union and fighting for their jobs or crossing picket lines to 
avoid losing the job they have had for 10 to 20 years. Is this a free 
choice, as some of our colleagues would suggest, or is this not really 
blackmail? It takes away the rights and dignity of workers in this 
country.
  What does it mean to tell workers you have the right to strike when 
exercising that right means that you will be summarily fired and 
replaced by another worker?
  This is not about whether a company has to close its doors in the 
face of a strike. This only concerns the permanent replacement 
strikers. Permanent replacements are given special priorities in their 
new jobs, placing new hires above people with seniority and experience. 
We are not suggesting that replacement workers cannot compete for jobs. 
They just should not get special rights over and above those of the 
workers who have devoted their lives to the company.
  As a nation, we have a choice: Continue down the path of lower wages, 
lower productivity, and fewer organized workers, or take the option 
pursued by our major economic competitors of cooperation, high wages, 
high skills, and high productivity.
  We want to pursue that high-skill path. We must do it with an 
organized work force. We cannot do it with the destructive management 
practices of the past decade such as the hiring of replacement workers.
  Instead, we need new approaches to management that foster enhanced 
labor-management relations and cooperative approaches that stimulate 
employee productivity and enable management to get the most from its 
employees' skills, brain power, and effort.
  Our Nation cannot afford to limit our competitiveness through 
practices that promote distrust between our workers and our managers. 
Instead, we must work for the mutual interest of all parties. I believe 
the President's Executive order is a positive step toward such goals.
  Mr. President, this is an issue of particular interest to my State of 
Iowa. In January, Bridgestone/Firestone, a large employer in the Des 
Moines area and other Midwestern States, announced the permanent 
replacement of nearly 3,000 workers involved in the strike against the 
company for better working conditions and fairer treatment by their 
employers.
  The bargaining sessions had broken down and the employees exercised 
their legal right to strike. This is Bridgestone/Firestone, and maybe 
not too many people have heard of Bridgestone, but certainly everyone 
has heard of Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. Firestone sold out to the 
Bridgestone Corp., which is a wholly Japanese-based corporation based 
in Japan, which bought the Firestone Co. and now it is called 
Bridgestone/Firestone.
  Many of the workers at the Bridgestone/Firestone plant in Des Moines 
are folks I grew up with. I come from a small town of about 150 people. 
Most of the people in that town either worked at John Deere or they 
worked at Firestone.
  So I know what these people are like. They are good people. They are 
hard-working people. They are churchgoing people. They support their 
schools. They have good, strong families.
  What does this say to our working people of this country? Certainly 
we have to understand we cannot just take people like that and throw 
them out on the trash heap. There is something about dignity, something 
about the fact that these people put in all these years for this 
company. And it is not as if they are asking for the sky and the Moon 
and the Sun and the stars in bargaining.
  As a matter of fact, a couple of years ago, Bridgestone/Firestone 
asked the employees to do certain things, and they did. They asked them 
to increase their productivity at Bridgestone/Firestone. Let me read a 
letter from one of those employees sent to me in January of this year. 
This is quite a long letter so I will not read the whole thing.
  Sherrie Wallace is a Bridgestone tractor tiremaker:

       I was raised to respect my peers, act responsibly to my 
     community, do the very best I could on whatever I did * * *.
       When Bridgestone came to each of us asking for help because 
     we were not doing as well as the company needed to do, we all 
     did our best. They asked me for one more tire every day and 
     to stay out on the floor and forego my cleanup time. Not only 
     did I respond, so did each and every member of the URW. Not 
     only did I give them the one more tire per day, I gave them 
     three times what they asked for. Our production levels 
     soared. We threw ourselves into our company believing that we 
     all must succeed together in order to create a better way of 
     life for all. The membership joined committees and we became 
     involved, we gave them our hearts. We began to believe this 
     company was different. We gave them our input to create a 
     better working environment. To increase productivity we began 
     to meet our production levels. We were proud of our company 
     and our union. Together, we did make a difference. It is 
     these things that make me wonder why does Bridgestone now 
     demand such unreasonable demands?
       This is not an issue of money. It is an issue of work 
     ethics, fairness to your employees, good working conditions, 
     reasonable working hours and benefits.

  Now, Mr. President, let me talk about this a second. It is not about 
money. Let me give one of the things that Bridgestone was demanding of 
its workers in terms of negotiating agreement. Bridgestone, for as long 
as I can remember--Firestone since I was a kid growing up--they always 
had three shifts a day.
  I know the present occupant of the chair is from the State of Ohio, 
and I know they have a lot of industry there. I know that the three 
shifts, the 8-hour shifts, three shifts a day, has been pretty 
commonplace in our history of this country. Three shifts a day, 8 hours 
a day. And as a person goes up the seniority level--obviously, when you 
start at a plant you get the graveyard shift. Stay there longer, you 
get the evening shift. And after a while you work up and you get the 
day shift.
  That has been a well-accepted practice in our country for a long 
time. At least with that kind of working condition, you knew when you 
went to work, when you came home, you knew when you had time off to be 
with your family.
  Here is what Bridgestone wanted their employees to do; not three 8-
hour shifts a day but two 12-hour shifts a day and there would be three 
shifts. So here is what it would do: You would be on 3 days working 12 
hours and then you would be off 2 days; then you would be on 2 days 
working 12 hours, and you would be off 2 days; then you would be on 3 
days 12 hours, and off 2 days; then you would be 3 days on and 2 days 
off. See what they are getting at?
  How would you ever know when you will be home with your family? How 
could you plan a Little League activity on Saturday or Sunday? You 
might be home one Saturday, and then you 
[[Page S3711]] might not be home for a couple Saturdays after that. You 
might be home in the middle of a week. When you work 12 hours a day, 
how do you spend time with your kids and family?
  I have to say, Mr. President, who knows as well as I do, that a lot 
of these people, now both husband and wife are working. Take one of 
them working a 12-hour shift and the other might be working an 8-hour 
shift someplace else. They have precious little time together. This is 
what Bridgestone is demanding.
  I said Bridgestone is a Japanese company. Do they do that in Japan? 
No. They have three 8-hour shifts a day, with the seniority system. 
Would they ask their workers in Japan to go to a rotating 12-hour 
shift? Not on your life, because they have agreements with those 
workers. If they tried to do something like that, they would have a 
strike and in Japan they cannot permanently replace those workers. But 
they can here.
  Well, like Sherrie Wallace said, it is not even an issue about money. 
But if we want to talk about money, we will talk about it a little bit. 
A person might think, however, that Bridgestone probably has better 
productivity and lower wages in Japan. Not true. Productivity is higher 
here per worker in America.
  Mr. President, the average annual wage of a Bridgestone/Firestone 
employee in Japan is $52,500 a year. The average wage for that same 
Bridgestone/Firestone employee in the United States is $37,045.
  But this issue is not about the money. That is not the point. The 
point is, what kind of working conditions are they going to have? Are 
they going to be able to spend time with their families? I might add as 
a postscript, since the last time I gave this speech on the floor about 
this--Senator Simon and I have worked very closely on this--Senator 
Simon got hold of the Bridgestone people at their headquarters in 
Tennessee. They agreed to come back, sit down and talk. And I came out 
on the floor and congratulated them. I said, ``I am glad to see that. 
Maybe we will get some movement here.''
  What has happened since that time is the Bridgestone/Firestone people 
basically came in and said, ``Here is our offer, take it or leave it.'' 
That is not talking, that is not negotiating.
  Since I last took the floor to talk about this, it looks like 
Bridgestone/Firestone had no intentions to sit down and bargain in good 
faith or negotiate at all. We thought they were; we hoped they were. 
The workers even agreed--even agreed--to save their dignity and to save 
their jobs, they agreed to go to the 12-hour shift. I do not think they 
ever should have agreed to it, but they did. Guess what Bridgestone/
Firestone said? That is not enough. They want further concessions.
  I think it is absolutely clear that in the case of Bridgestone/
Firestone they only want one thing: Bust the union, drive down the 
wages to the lowest possible unit they can get, squeeze them as much as 
possible.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. I wonder if the Senator will yield for a question.
  Mr. HARKIN. I will be delighted to.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. I do not want to get into a debate about 
Bridgestone's policies in this country, but wouldn't the Senator from 
Iowa agree that labor law is very different in Japan? So I think that 
when you say that in Japan they could not do this, this is because they 
have different labor laws in Japan and seldom have strikes. I do not 
think it is an exact comparison about what they may be trying to do in 
the United States versus the fact they would not do it in Japan. There 
are many reasons they cannot do it in Japan, is that not correct?
  Mr. HARKIN. Is the Senator saying--
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. They do not strike in Japan.
  Mr. HARKIN. But they have the right to strike and they can strike and 
they cannot be permanently replaced. It is against labor law in Japan 
to have a striking worker permanently replaced.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. We can debate the differing interpretations of 
Japanese labor law, but I do think it is different. I just wanted to 
say that I think it is unfair to compare the two. At some point, I will 
go into it, but I wanted to make that point. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. HARKIN. I appreciate the Senator. I will be glad to engage in 
more dialog if my friend from Kansas would like to do that. I am not 
suggesting the labor law in Japan is the same as in United States. I am 
just saying in regard to this one company, what they are doing here in 
the United States of America they would not be allowed to do under 
Japanese labor law. That is all I am saying.
  I know labor laws are different, but they would not be allowed to do 
in Japan what they are doing in this country. That is the point I am 
making.
  I want to make a further point, too, that I do not want to be accused 
of Japanese bashing. The fact is, most Japanese companies that operate 
in America do not operate in this way. In fact, a lot of the Japanese 
companies that operate here have darn good working relationships with 
their workers, with organized labor. They have sat down at the 
bargaining table and have bargained in good faith. In fact, in many 
ways, they have been better than some U.S. companies, as a matter of 
fact.
  I am not saying this is endemic of all Japanese companies. In fact, 
this is a rogue Japanese company, quite frankly. I think it is casting 
a bad light over a lot of other Japanese companies. We said that to the 
Ambassador from Japan--and others said it to the Prime Minister when he 
was here. If you get one bad apple in the barrel, like Bridgestone/
Firestone, it can spoil the whole barrel.
  I will be glad to engage in any further dialog with the Senator from 
Kansas on this issue later on, if she so desires.
  Again, my point was that Bridgestone/Firestone I do not believe now 
is acting in good faith. I thought before maybe these were bargaining 
techniques, to hold out a little bit. We have been through this before. 
But after the last instance in which they indicated they were going to 
sit down and bargain and talk and then they just basically said, ``Here 
is our offer, take it or leave it,'' it indicates to me that if they 
ever were bargaining in good faith, they certainly are not operating in 
good faith right now.
  I wanted to finish a little bit more of Sherrie Wallace's letter.

       You can not know how betrayed we American workers feel. You 
     can not know the hours of fear and heartache we have endured. 
     You can not know how we fear for our safety when we are on 
     the picket lines. We are just average family people pursuing 
     a dream called the ``American dream.''
       Many of us in the plants have injuries that we have 
     substained because of our employment at Bridgestone. Back 
     injuries, muscle tearing, joint replacement, arm injuries, 
     carpal tunnel, cancer and asbestosis these are just a few. 
     Many of our brothers and sisters have died because of 
     conditions at these types of companies. Many of us just can't 
     get another job. Who would hire half a man or woman. We can't 
     stand to lose our jobs. There is no place else to go. Many of 
     us are unfit to work anywhere else. Where do you go to work 
     when your arms hurt you so badly you finally have to have 
     surgery. Yet knowing full well you will never fully recover 
     from the physical and mental abuse you have endured. You know 
     that the pain will never fully go away. Your physical 
     abilities will never be the same. It is unconceivable that 
     this company would throw you aside like a piece of used up 
     machinery. But they did and they still do.
       * * * You see, we are one of those families that both 
     husband and wife work at Bridgestone/Firestone * * *. We both 
     have lost our jobs, our benefits and our livelihood. We have 
     had days and nights of no sleep, wondering where our life is 
     heading. Trying to keep the ``American dream'' alive with 
     dignity, conviction to stand up for what you believe in and 
     hope * * *.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print the letter in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                                  January 8, 1995.
     Senator Harkin.
       Dear Senator Harkin: You have been on my mind since the day 
     I heard you speak in Des Moines, Iowa at our local 310 United 
     Rubber Workers rally in December. I was so proud of you. I 
     was proud that you represented me and my family. You gave me 
     hope for my future when at a time like this there seems to be 
     no bright future. You seem to know my frustrations, my pain 
     and my intense anger towards a foreign owned company who 
     truly treats their American Worker as a second class citizen. 
     In Japan it is illegal to practice those same work ethics 
     that they are attempting to establish in the American 
     Bridgestone Memberships.
       I was raised to respect my piers, act responsibly to my 
     community and to do the 
     [[Page S3712]] very best I could on whatever I did. So it is 
     very hard for me to understand their lack of respect for 
     their American laborer.
       When Bridegstone came to each of us asking for help because 
     we were not doing as well as the company needed to do. We all 
     did our best. They asked me for one more tire everyday and to 
     stay out on the floor and forego my clean-up time. Not only 
     did I respond, so did each and every member of the URW. Not 
     only did I give them the one more tire per day, I gave them 
     three times what they asked for. Our production levels 
     soared. We threw ourselves into our company believing that we 
     all must succeed together in order to create a better way of 
     life for all. The membership joined committees and we became 
     involved, we gave them our hearts. We began to believe this 
     company was different. We gave them our input to create a 
     better working environment. To increase productivity we began 
     to meet our production levels. We were proud of our company 
     and our union. Together we did make a difference. It is these 
     things that
      make me wonder why does Bridgestone now demand such 
     unreasonable demands?
       This is not an issue of money. It is an issue of work 
     ethics, fairness to your employees, good working conditions, 
     reasonable working hours and benefits.
       You can not know how betrayed we American workers feel. You 
     can not know the hours of fear and heartache we have 
     indurred. You can not know how we fear for our safety when we 
     are on the pickit lines. We are just average family people 
     persuing a dream called the ``American Dream.''
       Many of us in the plants have injuries that we have 
     substained because of our employment at Bridgestone. Back 
     injuries, muscle tearing, joint replacement, arm injuries, 
     carpal tunnel, cancer and asbestosis these are just a few. 
     Many of our brothers and sisters have died because of 
     conditions at these types of companies. Many of us just can't 
     get another job. Who would hire half a man or woman. We can't 
     stand to lose our jobs. There is no place else to go! Many of 
     us are unfit to work anywhere else. Where do you go to work 
     when your arms hurt you so badly you finally have to have 
     surgery. yet knowing full well you will never fully recover 
     from the physical and mental abuse you have indurred. You 
     know that the pain will never fully go away. Your physical 
     abilities will never be the same. It is unconceivable that 
     this company would throw you aside like a piece of used up 
     machinery. But they did and still do!
       Please do not let forty-six years of continued bargaining 
     for better wages, vacations, working hours, working 
     conditions, health benefits and retirement, everything a 
     union stands for, be destroyed in one six month struggle with 
     one foreign owned company end. Because in reality the 
     Japanese owned Bridgestone tire manufacturer wants an 
     economical advantage over the other American tire 
     manufacturers that are doing fine with the same contracts we 
     are striving for. In the process they will undermine those 
     businesses causing a domino effect, which will undermine 
     American economics. If this is let to happen the process will 
     undermine those American businesses causing them to do the 
     same thing this Japanese company is doing which in turn will 
     undermine the American economy.
       Where do you go to work when you have worked thirty-three 
     years at Bridgestone? You are to young to retire and no one 
     else wants you because you are too old for them. What do you 
     do? There is no money coming in, no job, and no hope of a 
     decent job. You lose your home, your car and sometimes 
     through all the tears and frustration you lose your wife, and 
     if your young enough, your children. What do you have left? 
     You have even lost your self respect.
       What about if both parents work at Bridgestone. The entire 
     family becomes a disfunctional family. Even young children 
     feel the pain. These are not scenearious, they are true life 
     stories.
       The Japanese tire companies in this country got together 
     and became the unholy alliance. Their goal was to try and 
     break the membership. They deliberately set out to undermine 
     our contracts, our work ethics and to destroy our integrity. 
     The other Japanese companies failed to accomplish their 
     entire goals because they are small companies and could not 
     economically continue to lose their cash flow. Bridgestone 
     has several tire manufacturing plants in foreign countries. 
     It is those plants that are supporting them now. The greatest 
     concern I have is knowing that we are not the first union 
     that will have this problem. There will be more union 
     brothers and sister that will fall.
       I am so perplexed--why hasn't our government seen the 
     dangers and helped her people? Why doesn't our Congressman 
     help? Why do not our leaders that we elected into office see 
     that her American working middle class people need their 
     help? What is it we have to do to get your help? Violence has 
     already broken out. Have our congressmen forgotten why we 
     elected them? There is a great need for a change in our laws. 
     We need laws to protect our working citizens and to prohibit 
     replacement workers. We need our Congress, governors and 
     President to take off their blinders. Stop turning the other 
     cheek. We need you now!
       Please please help this kind of thing to never happen 
     again. This is just a beginning of a big war with foreign 
     owned businesses to continue to strip American workers of 
     their dignity, their values and to undermine the American 
     family.
       Please restore my faith in our American Government! Let me 
     see that our people still are important to you. Let me see 
     that the little guy is still in your hearts and minds. Please 
     help me keep the pride in my heart when I help my son study 
     his American history. When we read about the famous ride of 
     Paul Revere or of Ben Franklin the father of knowledge and 
     George Washington the father of our country that the tears of 
     pride and joy fall down my checks and when he sees them I can 
     smile and tell him this great nation and her great leadership 
     is still that strong, determined, fair and brave people they 
     were two-hundred years ago. Do not let him see the tears of 
     pain that I now cry and the dispair I feel show in my eyes. 
     You see, we are one of those families that both husband and 
     wife work at Bridgestone/Firestore in Des Moines, Iowa. We 
     both have lost our jobs, our benefits and our livelihood. We 
     have had days and nights of no sleep, wondering where our 
     life is heading. Trying to keep the ``American Dream'' alive 
     with dignity, conviction to stand up for what you believe in 
     and HOPE * * *.
       Please hear our plead for help * * * Over 25,000 employees, 
     spouses and children will be effected by this one American-
     Japanese incident. If this is not stopped, more heartache 
     will follow. Please don't let us down! May God be with you.
           Sincerely in hope,
                                                  Sherrie Wallace,
                                 Bridgestone Tractor Tire Builder.

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, that is a letter from the heart. This is 
not a canned letter. That letter comes from the heart. I do not believe 
I know Sherrie Wallace personally, but I sure know a lot of people like 
her, and I know some of my cousins are in the same situation. It tears 
your heart out when you see them and when you talk to them. These are 
people who have given their lives--like I said, it is not as if they 
were shirking, it is not as if they were cutting down on productivity. 
In fact, the productivity at that Bridgestone/Firestone, as Sherrie 
Wallace has said in her letter, has gone up in the last couple of 
years.
  The company they went to the State of Iowa in the 1980's and said, 
``We need some help, we need government help or we can't exist. We have 
all these workers here and, oh my gosh, we have to have government 
help.''
  Here is what they asked for: They asked for grants of $1 million from 
the State; $300,000 from Polk County; $100,000 from the city; $100,000 
from Iowa Power; $50,000 from Midwest Gas. They asked for that in May 
1987, and in June 1987, they received all the grants.
  In July 1987, they got their $1 million from the State of Iowa. That 
same year, they went to the workers and said you have to take cuts or 
we cannot exist. So the workers took another $4 an hour cut in wages 
and benefits in 1987. So they asked the workers to produce more. In 
October 1993, the Des Moines Bridgestone/Firestone plant profit was $5 
million ahead of their budget schedule. In March--get this now--1994, 
the workers reached a new high of 80.5 pounds per man-hour and set an 
all-time record for pounds that they had in the warehouse.
  The company boasted that they did it with 600 fewer workers. So like 
Sherrie said, they came and they said build me an extra tire a day. 
They went out and built three extra tires a day. They asked them to 
take wage cuts. They did. They took wage cuts, actually in the latter 
part of the 1980's, totaling over $7.43 an hour. So they increased 
their work productivity, took their wage cuts, and Bridgestone/
Firestone gets almost $1.5 million in grants from State and local 
governments.
  And in March--this is important--of 1994 they reached this record 
production level, an all-time record for pounds warehoused. And guess 
when it was that Bridgestone/Firestone said they would not negotiate 
further and forced the workers out on strike? You got it, the summer of 
1994. After they had pushed their workers, got the production up, got 
all this stuff warehoused, then they said: OK, now we are not going to 
bargain with you to reach an agreement.
  I have said it before, and I will keep saying, I think Bridgestone/
Firestone is perhaps the prime example of corporate irresponsibility 
and bad faith more than any company I have ever seen in this country.
  Again, these are very hard-working people. Times are a little better. 
The company is making a good profit. Workers just want fair treatment. 
That is all they want.
  What did President Clinton say in his Executive order? He said 
something very important to the workers at Bridgestone/Firestone. He 
said we are 
[[Page S3713]] not going to continue to take your tax dollars and then 
use them in the Federal Government to buy from Bridgestone/Firestone 
those tires since they will not even negotiate in good faith with you.
  I think that is the right decision. I am proud of President Clinton 
for making that decision. I think the workers who work at that plant 
ought to have the assurance of knowing that their dollars are not going 
to buy those tires for the Federal Government.
  The President's action is entirely lawful, fully within his 
authority, and conforms with the practice of previous Republican 
Presidents in labor issues. President Bush issued Executive Order No. 
12818 in October 1992 that prohibited prehire agreements in Federal 
contracting. These are collective bargaining agreements that set labor 
standards for construction work prior to the hiring of workers. Yet, I 
did not hear any of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
complaining then that President Bush had exceeded his authority. That's 
because he issued an Executive order that came down on the side of 
business, not on the side of workers.
  President Bush also issued an Executive order to implement the Beck 
decision concerning the use of union funds for political purposes 
despite legislation that was then pending. At that time, Congressman 
DeLay, who is now the House Republican whip, said that Bush's action 
was, and I quote, ``* * * * an effort by the President to do something 
through Executive order that he cannot get Congress to do.''
  What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. When the 
Republicans controlled the White House and not the Congress, this kind 
of Presidential policy happened all the time. Back then, I did not hear 
a peep from our friends on the other side of the aisle concerned about 
a President stepping on the prerogatives of Congress. In fact, they 
applauded the action.
  So, Mr. President, although I know it is allowed under the rules of 
the Senate this amendment is not in the best interests of the workers 
of our country. It is not in the best interests of our economy. It is 
not in the best interests of labor relations in this country. The 
President has the authority. He acted lawfully.
  The fact is, we had the votes to pass the striker replacement bill 
last year. It passed the House. President Clinton said he would sign 
it. It came to the Senate. We debated it. We voted. We got 53 votes on 
a cloture motion, seven short of the number needed. But the majority of 
the Members of this body voted to pass the anti-striker-replacement 
bill. So it is not as if the President did something that Congress was 
totally opposed to. A majority of Congress supported that action.
  This amendment is one I think we are going to have to talk about, and 
I do not think it is in the best interests of this country. I think we 
ought to reject it.
  There are those, Mr. President, who might say that the workers at 
Bridgestone/Firestone have not been permanently replaced. I have a 
letter here from Gary Sullivan, and it is a copy of a letter that was 
sent to him by--I think the name is Lamar Edwards, labor relations 
manager for Bridgestone/Firestone. Here is what the letter says:

       On January [and then it is handwritten in] 19, 1995, you 
     did not report to work because you were on strike and you 
     were permanently replaced. Please address any questions you 
     have to the Labor Relations Office.

  Not even ``Sincerely,'' just ``Lamar Edwards, Labor Relations 
Manager.''
  Gary Sullivan wrote me a note on this letter.

       This is all I'm worth after 24 years of devoted and loyal 
     service. Please continue to hang in there. We need your help. 
     Gary Sullivan, Sr.

  Not even so much as a thank you for 24 years. No thanks for 
increasing productivity, no thanks for taking the wage cuts you did in 
the 1970's to help get the company back on its feet. No thanks for your 
tax dollars that came from the State of Iowa or the county of Polk to 
give us grants to help get us back. No, nothing like that. Just out the 
door.
  There are those who are saying these people have not been permanently 
replaced. Well, here is the letter. I ask unanimous consent that a copy 
of this letter be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

       This is all I'm worth after 24 years of devoted and loyal 
     service. Please continue to hang in there, we need your help.
       P.S. I'll help you all I can on election day.
     Gary R. Sullivan, Sr.
                                                                    ____

     G.R. Sullivan,
     Des Moines, IA:
       On January 19, 1995 you did not report to work because you 
     were on strike and you were permanently replaced.
       Please address any questions you have to the Labor 
     Relations Office.
                                                    Lamar Edwards,
                                          Labor Relations Manager.

  Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield on that point?
  Mr. HARKIN. I am delighted to yield to my colleague.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I have been listening to the Senator from 
Iowa and I certainly hope my colleagues have paid attention to the last 
few moments of the Senator's presentation. I hope they listen to the 
whole presentation, but particularly the latter part of it highlights 
what this debate is really all about.
  As I understand it--and I would appreciate the Senator correcting 
me--here was a person who had worked for a particular company over 
virtually a lifetime. The company was successful, and reaped large 
profits. This worker tried to enhance his own and his family's economic 
condition--trying to at least participate in the growing success of his 
company--by using the accepted, standard practice in this Nation since 
it has been a great industrial power, of joining with his colleagues to 
advance their economic interests and the interests of their children in 
a company that had been very successful. And he was virtually fired--
although technically that is illegal under the National Labor Relations 
Act. But effectively, that person was thrown out of that job, 
terminated and permanently replaced, in terms of any chance for the 
future.
  We are talking about hard-working families, people who are playing by 
the rules, people going to work, trying to educate their children, and 
effectively they are dismissed, put out on unemployment compensation 
and perhaps even onto the welfare rolls.
  As I understand it, what this Executive order says is that we are not 
going to tolerate that. This President is not going to tolerate that 
kind of activity when it comes to Government contracting, where there 
is a Government contract which is effectively being paid for by the 
people's taxes. Under the Executive order we are not going to 
perpetuate that kind of injustice to workers who are being treated like 
that.
  My understanding is, the order only applies if there is a legitimate 
strike--we are not talking about the termination of the contract. My 
understanding is further that it is only in these circumstances, as in 
the example the Senator from Iowa gave, where we have someone who has 
been a hard-working person, effectively replaced, thrown out of his 
job. And what this Executive order is saying is that we are not going 
to use American taxpayers' funds to encourage or support or perpetuate 
that kind of activity in the United States of America. When it comes to 
the taxpayers' funds, this President has a responsibility, and he is 
not going to continue to support or encourage that activity; he is 
saying: in those circumstances, we will not grant contracts to those 
kinds of companies.
  Am I correct in understanding what the Senator's position on this is?
  Mr. ABRAHAM assumed the chair.
  Mr. HARKIN. The Senator from Massachusetts is absolutely right. He 
has distilled it down to its essential points.
  It really says something. I do not know if the Senator was here when 
I was reading the history of Bridgestone/Firestone. They went to the 
State of Iowa and they got all this money, taxpayers' money, to build 
their plant up. Then they asked the workers to take all the cuts in 
wages. Now they are out on strike and replacing them.
  It is all right for them to get taxpayers' money, I guess, in order 
to get their plant up and working. Then they go ahead and fire the very 
workers who paid those taxes. But it is not all right for us to say 
that taxpayer dollars are not going to be used to buy products made by 
a company that refused to 
[[Page S3714]] bargain reasonably, that treated their loyal workers 
like used-up equipment.
  Talk about a double standard. We are saying: Listen, Bridgestone/
Firestone, you already had your hand in the till. You already took 
money before from the State government--I say, not the Federal, the 
State, county, and local government. Then you cannot be complaining now 
when we are saying we are not going to use taxpayers' dollars to 
enhance your position.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Iowa will 
yield for a moment, again?
  Mr. HARKIN. Yes.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, in response to the Senator from 
Massachusetts saying a family had worked a lifetime at Firestone, is it 
not correct to say that Firestone was going broke when it was purchased 
by Bridgestone? So the future of the workers at the old Firestone Co. 
was in some jeopardy at that time. Not to go into, again, a lengthy 
debate on the practices of Bridgestone, but, at the time the whole 
issue was not wages so much as hours. The Senator from Iowa has already 
discussed that. But they said they needed to do the shift in hours to 
cover capital costs.
  When you mentioned what Iowa chipped in and asked the taxpayers to 
spend in support of Bridgestone. Was that not something that was 
debated, at least, in the Iowa Legislature? Or was it a decision made 
by the Governor, I suppose, on how much taxpayers' support would be 
given to Bridgestone at that time? It was not something that was done 
without some approval somewhere along the line, isn't that correct?
  Mr. HARKIN. Absolutely. I think the legislature, I think Polk County, 
all agreed to give them these dollars, these grants.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. So these very workers who were in jeopardy of losing 
their jobs because the company was going bankrupt now have at least had 
an opportunity, if they so chose to do so, to work for a company that 
is productive and is going strong.
  Whether or not they should have done it by replacing striking 
workers, I would argue, is not what we should be debating here. I 
suggest to the Senator from Iowa, we can have this debate at another 
time.
  But what we should be debating here is something that follows on just 
the past weeks and months of debate that we have had on the separation 
of powers regarding the Constitution. That is why I feel we ought to 
take seriously this Executive order.
  I do not mean to intrude on the time of the Senator from Iowa, but I 
think that if you get into the particular situation of Bridgestone/
Firestone it was not a question of long-time workers somehow being 
forced out in the cold. There was a great tragedy that Firestone was 
teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and was going under. But I would 
like to go back to the fundamental issue here, which really is the 
separation of powers.
  I yield and thank the Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. I would just respond by saying I do not know where the 
truth lies in this. But I would say to the Senator from Kansas, there 
is some evidence that the Bridgestone Corp. overbought. They overpaid 
for Firestone. As a result of that, they tried to get in a more 
competitive mode by doing the things that I mentioned.
  For example, they asked the union members to take $7.43 an hour cuts, 
from 1985 to 1990.
  They got their taxes reduced in the county in which they reside. They 
got the grants to get going again. And, as Sherrie Wallace said in her 
letter: We were willing to do that to save our jobs. They asked me to 
produce one more tire a day, I produced three more tires a day. As I 
pointed out, in March of last year they reached an all-time high for 
productivity.
 So the plant is making a lot more money. They are much more 
profitable. Yet, they are not sharing some of these profits with the 
workers. The workers took their cuts, I respond to my friend from 
Kansas, in the 1970's; big cuts. The taxpayers coughed up a lot of 
money to get this plant going and to help Bridgestone make it. They 
have now made it. No one--not even Bridgestone--is claiming that they 
are not making good money now. They are making a lot of money. They are 
very profitable.

  So instead of saying, OK, Mr. Sullivan. You have worked here for 24 
years. You took a lot of cuts in the seventies. We got our plant going 
again. Instead of saying we are going to raise your wages a little bit, 
give you a little bit better deal, no. Take more cuts. Instead of 
working 8 hours a day, we will make you work 12 hours a day. That is 
what they are saying to them.
  I again point out to my friend from Kansas that I have cousins 
working all over the place in the tire industry. I have a cousin who is 
one of the negotiators for Armstrong Tire, another tire company in Des 
Moines. They went out on strike. But they got back together and they 
sat down and negotiated. They reached an agreement. Goodyear did the 
same thing. They reached an agreement.
  But then what this company has come in and done--that is why I talk 
about this kind of path the company is taking--is insidious 
because Bridgestone/Firestone is able to do this. They have put 
Goodyear and Armstrong and Dunlop at a competitive disadvantage. 
Goodyear acted in good faith. They went out and bargained. They reached 
agreements. They signed a contract. The Goodyear workers are happy. 
They are organized, union, and everybody seems to be happy with them. 
And Goodyear is making money. But now Bridgestone comes in and 
undercuts them with this kind of depressing of wages and getting rid of 
long-time workers. What is Goodyear going to do? What are they going to 
do? They say, well, they have to answer to their shareholders, too. 
That is what is so insidious about this.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Iowa that I 
cannot disagree with what he is saying. But then, would you turn right 
around and say that the President of the United States should enter 
into and completely change the dynamics by intervention? I think what 
we are debating about is what authority the President has to tilt the 
balance of what we really have felt was a balance. And I am sympathetic 
with what the Senator from Iowa is pointing out; that Goodyear worked 
it out and they did not at Bridgestone. But I argue that through this 
Executive order we now find the President completely intruding in a 
labor-management relationship. If we find legislation to decide to do 
so and have that debate and vote, that is a different matter. But I 
think the Senator from Iowa certainly recognizes that we have some 
question about what is in the Constitution and the separation of powers 
between the executive and the legislative branches.
  As much as I am sympathetic with the argument that the Senator from 
Iowa is pointing out, the argument I would want to make on this 
amendment is the way we are trying to intrude on law that does exist. 
That is my point. I think the case made is one that obviously 
resonates, but this is the wrong way to handle it.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, again the Senator was here in 1992 when 
President Bush issued Executive Order No. 12818, October 1992, that 
prohibits prehire agreements in Federal contracts. These are collective 
bargaining agreements that set labor standards for construction work 
prior to the hiring of workers. Again, this is labor-management. Yet, 
we interfered. Maybe the Senator did speak out against that at that 
time. I do not remember.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, did the Senator from Iowa speak out 
against it?
  Mr. HARKIN. No. Because there are times when a President can, in 
fact, issue Executive orders. I am not speaking out against this one 
either.
  Mrs. KASSEBAUM. Mr. President, let me suggest to the Senator from 
Iowa, that there were those who questioned the legality of the prehire 
Executive order, but never challenged it in the courts. While it was a 
bit questionable in my mind, I did not challenge it.
  But I think in this case we have a situation where Congress has 
addressed striker replacements the past two Congresses, and labor law 
matters generally for over 60 years. We can argue whether President 
Bush's prehire contract Executive order should have been challenged. 
That is debatable. As the Senator says, he did not challenge it because 
he agreed with it. I would suggest President Bush's prehire contract 
[[Page S3715]] Executive order has worked successfully. In all honesty, 
Mr. President, I probably did not think about it much at the time. But 
I suggest that this Executive order goes even further. That is my 
concern.
  Mr. HARKIN. Again, I appreciate the frankness of the Senator from 
Kansas. To be honest, I did not know about it myself. I am saying that 
these things take place by a President. Quite frankly, they have a 
right to do so in these kinds of situations.
  It just seems to me that President Bush issued this Executive order, 
the one on the Beck decision, and the whip on the House side said that 
a President will do something by Executive order that he cannot get 
Congress to do. This is the same thing here, although in another way 
Congress wants to do something about striker replacement. The House 
passed it last year. The Senate voted 57 votes. It is only because of 
the filibuster rule that we were unable to pass it and get it down to 
the President for his signature.
  So again, I say to the Senator from Kansas that I think we have every 
right for the President to do this. It is perfectly lawful. But this is 
not really the place for this amendment. We are on the supplemental 
appropriations bill. This is not the place for this kind of an 
amendment.
  Again, Mr. President, I close my remarks by saying that we just 
cannot continue to use taxpayer dollars to subsidize--that is exactly 
what it is any way you cut it--companies that say to those same 
taxpayers I do not care how long you have worked here, and I do not 
care if you are exercising your legal rights, we do not care. We are 
going to permanently replace you. Well, I think it is time for us to 
say that we are not going to subsidize them anymore. That is exactly 
what we have been doing. That is what President Clinton's Executive 
order does. I wholeheartedly support it. I think it is a step in the 
right direction and a courageous decision by the President.
  I am going to do everything in my power as a U.S. Senator, regardless 
of how long I have to stand here, how many days it takes, to make sure 
that Executive order can go forward and this amendment is defeated.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank our friend and colleague for his 
excellent presentation on this issue and for the focus that he has 
brought to this issue. The fact of the matter is that the President is 
entitled to make these judgments. In terms of his contracting 
authority, the President is charged with oversight of billions and 
billions of dollars. The President has the responsibility to be sure 
that we are going to get a dollar's worth for the dollar expended.
  What basically is at risk here is quality. The fact is, that when you 
have replacement workers, and you have individuals who do not have the 
appropriate training, who do not have the necessary skills, who do not 
have the ability, you are putting at serious risk the results and the 
quality of the purchases. We have seen that time in and time out. One 
of the great authorities on this is a fellow named John Dunlop, who is 
not a Democrat, he is a Republican. But when the issue comes down to 
being sure that we are going to have decent wages for skilled workers, 
he comes down against the permanent replacement of strikers
 because he knows that it is not just the dollars and cents of a 
particular wage, but about the competency of the individual, the skills 
they have, and the oversight of their performances. The President has 
the responsibility and he is exercising it. He is making a judgment 
that these replacement workers may be individuals who do not have the 
skills or the background to do the job, and as a result the Federal 
Government's investment is threatened.

  So I believe that the President has taken wise, sound action. I must 
say, as I was listening to the Senator from Iowa make his presentation, 
I was thinking back on the testimony of Cynthia Zavala, who testified 
in March 1993 before our committee. It is a similar story to the story 
recounted by the Senator from Iowa. Here is what she said:

       I live in Stockton, CA. I am 52 years old and I have four 
     children, 11 grandchildren, and 1 great grandchild. I have 
     been employed at Diamond Walnut Processing Plant in Stockton 
     for 24 years, starting in 1961, with several breaks when I 
     had my children. During my years with the company, I worked 
     my way up to cannery supervisor. My husband also worked for 
     Diamond for 33 years.

  So they have 57 years between them.

       I have always worked hard for the company. They called me 
     ``Roadrunner'' because I always moved so fast. Everybody in 
     the plant always worked hard. We felt a lot of pride in our 
     work. We took a personal interest in the products. That is 
     why, in 1985, when the managers came to us and said the 
     company was in trouble, we agreed to cut our own pay to help 
     save our company. It was hard for us. People who had been 
     with the company for 20, 30 years would have to go back to 
     what they earned maybe 10 years ago. Most of us only got 
     between $5 and $10 an hour. We had responsibilities and 
     families to think about.
       Well, we felt that Diamond Walnut was our family, too. The 
     managers said if we stuck by them, they would stick by us. 
     Some people ended up taking pay cuts as high as 40 percent. 
     After those cuts, we worked even harder; production levels 
     were up. This allowed us to double our productivity and cut 
     the work force in half, from 1,200 to 600, at the same time.
       In 1990, I was picked to be employee of the year, along 
     with another supervisor. I felt like the award was really for 
     the whole department. We broke the production record on the 
     line that year. Our hard work paid off for Diamond Walnut. 
     The next year, the net sales reached an all-time high, $171 
     million. The growers' return on their investment was 30 
     percent.
       Our contract was up for renegotiation, and we felt sure the 
     company would be ready to repay us for our sacrifices and 
     hard work. Instead, the company wanted to cut our pay even 
     more. They offered a small hourly increase of 10 cents, but 
     they were going to turn right around and take twice that away 
     by making us pay $30 a month for our health coverage. The 
     managers started coming to the production line and brought 
     young men from the outside with them. They wanted to know how 
     we did our work, how they could watch, but they weren't 
     allowed to touch the machines.
       We knew they were getting ready to replace us. We would go 
     home sometimes at the end of the day and cry because they 
     were forcing us to train the people who were going to take 
     away our jobs. We tried to get the company to be fair. We 
     knew our lower-paid people were just getting by. We were down 
     to $5, $6 for full time. Seasonal workers were getting $4.25 
     an hour with no health benefits. We knew we could not take 
     another pay cut, but the company said, ``Take it or leave 
     it.''
       We had never gone on strike before and we had been in the 
     union almost 40 years. We felt the company gave us no other 
     choice, so we went out. The next year, the company put the 
     scabs to work on the line. The long-time, loyal workers--75 
     percent of us women and minorities--ended up on the picket 
     line fighting for our jobs. That was September 4, 1991, 18\1/
     2\ months ago. We are still trying to get our jobs back. They 
     told us we were not wanted. Their loyalty is to the 
     replacement workers.
       We still can't believe this happened to us. We thought we 
     had the right to strike to defend ourselves from being 
     exploited by the company. As the months go by, many strikers 
     are losing their homes, their cars, and are getting behind in 
     their bills. Some of us could not afford to pay for 
     insurance, so we have had to skip going to the doctor and 
     hope we wouldn't get sick. Two weeks ago, one of our workers 
     died, without health insurance. We try to cheer each other 
     up. We work toward the day we get our jobs back. We hold 
     prayer meetings on the picket line every Tuesday.
       While we are struggling to get the jobs back, the U.S. 
     Agriculture Department has given Diamond millions of dollars 
     in subsidies to help the company sell more of its product in 
     Europe. Diamond now sells 40 percent of its walnuts in 
     Europe. The people I talked to were shocked about what 
     Diamond Walnut has done. When I told them the U.S. Government 
     has allowed the company to hire permanent replacements, they 
     didn't believe me and made me repeat the whole story.
       The union has been working very hard to help us but we need 
     our Government to help us, too. If the law says we have the 
     right to strike without being punished, then how can Diamond 
     Walnut get away with replacing us? I have dedicated 24 years 
     of my life to Diamond Walnut. I will work hard for the 
     company when I get my job back. I believe in our country, in 
     justice and, most of all, I believe in God. I believe that 
     Congress and President Clinton will do the right thing this 
     year.

  By God, he has done the right thing this year. He has done the right 
thing. He is saying that we are not going to provide those additional 
funds for Diamond to go ahead and expand their product overseas, while 
at the same time holding these hardworking Americans by their necks and 
denying them the opportunity to even be able to go into negotiations 
and collective bargaining. That is what we are talking about here.
  [[Page S3716]] That is why I am amazed that this is the first issue 
to come before the Senate in this Congress that concerns working 
families. Instead of trying to help them, we are talking about further 
disadvantaging people making $5 or $10 an hour. We are talking about 
the ``Cynthia Zavalas.''
  Why are we having this debate now? Why are we delaying the important 
appropriations necessary for our national security in order to 
shortchange Cynthia Zavala? That is what I am wondering. That is what I 
am wondering. It is wrong. We are just talking about the condition of 
working families.
  I will be participating in a forum tomorrow morning on the proposed 
increase in the minimum wage. We are not out here this afternoon 
offering an amendment to increase the minimum wage. But tomorrow, we 
are going to provide an opportunity for some individuals to speak to us 
about the needs of people like Cynthia Zavala, whom I just talked about 
here.
  We are going to hear from Barbara and Bill Malinowski, owners of the 
Yum-Yum Donut Shop in Waynesburg, PA. A former mineworker who lost his 
job when U.S. Steel closed down the mine, Bill and his wife Barbara 
bought a doughnut shop which now employs 14 people. As small-business 
employers, they support an increase in the minimum wage.
  We are going to hear from a small businessman and woman who lost 
their jobs. They lost their jobs. We are talking about people trying to 
make it in America, who are playing by the rules, and they want to 
work. This issue is about working. We are talking about protection of 
workers' rights--not about people who don't want to work. When we talk 
today about workers' rights, I am reminded that we are not even talking 
about giving working families in America a livable wage. That is not 
the issue before the Senate. That is not the issue in the Contract With 
America. That is not here. We are talking about taking away protections 
for workers
 like Cynthia Zavala.

  The Executive order does not promise Cynthia Zavala her job back, but 
it says that we are not going to see the Department of Agriculture use 
millions of dollars of taxpayers' funds that come from my State that 
represent the toil of workers in my State to go out and help this 
company shortchange Cynthia, slam the door on Cynthia. Fifty-seven 
years your family has given to that company and they have slammed the 
door on you. All we are saying is they are not going to get another 
bonus. But now we have an amendment on the floor of the U.S. Senate to 
stop that simple act of justice.
  At tomorrow's forum, Americans will also have a chance to hear from 
Barbara and Bill Malinowski. Bill is a former mineworker who lost his 
job, but now he employs 14 others and, as a small employer, supports 
increasing in the minimum wage.
  We'll hear from Nancy Carter, from Monaco, PA, in Beaver County, near 
Pittsburgh. Mrs. Carter's husband has had little success finding work 
after losing his job of 27 years in 1979, when the St. Joseph's Mineral 
Co. shut down. The family has been on and off unemployment and welfare 
as they struggle to find work. Their adult children help support the 
family at jobs at $4.50, $5, and $5.50 an hour.
  These are the kind of working Americans we are talking about. With 
all the other kinds of problems and challenges that we face in this 
country, our friends across the aisle want to pass legislation to 
diminish the rights of workers.
  David Dow, a pizza shop worker and parent, from Southfork, PA, near 
Johnstown. David and his wife work at low-wage jobs, staggering shifts 
to accommodate child care needs of their two children. They are trying 
to make it, working at low-wage jobs, staggering their shifts to 
accommodate child care. And now in furtherance of the Contract With 
America, the House has voted to diminish child care support.
  We will have a chance to hear David Dow tell us how he is going to 
have to look harder for child care if this budget goes through. And if 
you strike to increase your wages, you are going to get replaced and 
you may lose your job.
  We will hear from Tonya Outlaw, a child care center worker at Kiddie 
World Day Care, Windsor, NC. Ms. Outlaw is a single mother of two who 
quit an above-minimum-wage job because she could not afford child care. 
She is allowed to bring her children with her to her current minimum 
wage job as a child care center worker.
  This is what is really happening in America.
  We will hear from Alice Ballance, the owner of Kiddie World Child 
Development Center, Windsor, NC. Ms. Ballance owns licensed day care 
centers in rural North Carolina, primarily serving low-income working 
families. She pays minimum wage but supports an increase.
  We will hear from Keith Mahone, a contracted custodial worker from 
Baltimore, MD. Mr. Mahone, a single father with joint custody of his 
daughter, is employed at minimum wage cleaning school buildings for a 
Baltimore city contractor. He is a founding member of an organization 
which lobbied for the Baltimore living wage law. Effective July 1995, 
employers under contract with the city must pay their employees a 
livable wage.
  And we will hear from Robert Curry, a small business owner, from 
Braintree, MA. Mr. Curry employs 60 workers at several hardware stores 
in the South Shore area of Massachusetts. He supports an increase.
  These are examples, Mr. President, of what is happening out there in 
the work force. We are in the Senate talking about the technicalities 
of an Executive order, whether the President has the power to issue an 
Executive order. Well, I believe he absolutely does. That can be 
contested and it will be contested. I am sure there are many political 
leaders who would like to contest it and embarrass a President who is 
trying to provide some degree of protection to working Americans.
  And, my God, they need that protection. They need that protection, as 
they have seen the minimum wage effectively disappear in value over the 
last several years. These are real families, real workers, people 
trying to play by the rules, people who want to work to provide for 
their families, who want to make sure their kids can get a hot lunch at 
the school; or maybe that their teenage child can get a summer job 
because it is so difficult to find employment; or maybe their older 
child, who has been able to make it as a gifted, talented, motivated 
young person, can attend a good State college.
  Is that difficult? Increasingly so. In my own State of Massachusetts, 
it is more and more difficult for students to attend college.
  Mr. President, the larger issue we face, an issue clearly illustrated 
by this debate, is the issue of whether we in Congress are on the side 
of the working families across the country, or on the side of the 
wealthy and powerful.
  The amendment before us would put the Senate squarely on the side of 
the wealthy and powerful corporations and against working men and women 
exercising their legal right to strike. This is a clear example of the 
brazen Republican attempts to tilt the balance of labor-management 
relations in favor of business and against the workers of America.
  But this amendment is far from the only example of that kind of bias 
against working families. In fact, as the Republican Contract With 
America comes into sharper focus, it is becoming increasingly clear 
that the first 100 days of this Congress are turning into a 100-day 
Republican reign of terror against working men and women, against the 
elderly, and against children in need.
  I would like to take just a few moments to cite some of the examples 
of the harsh approach that our Republican colleagues seem bent on 
taking.
  The House Republicans are not only intent on slashing funds for low-
income Americans, they also want to rob them of any opportunity to 
improve their lives. The rescission package eliminates the funding for 
the summer jobs program for 1995 and for 1996, too; 1.2 million young 
Americans from the Nation's neediest areas will be without jobs this 
summer because of those Republican cuts. In Massachusetts, 30,000 young 
men and women who were to participate in the summer jobs program over 
the next two summers will have to look elsewhere for employment.
  The summer jobs program is more than just a paycheck. It offers an 
opportunity to learn the work ethic, acquire real job skills and 
training, and 
[[Page S3717]] gain a sense of accomplishment. Why would anyone deny 
young people that opportunity?
  Republicans are not only attacking the poor, they are also assaulting 
the Nation's cities. The Democratic and Republican mayors of America's 
largest cities have come out strongly against the elimination of the 
summer jobs program. They know firsthand how important it is to their 
local economy because it provides a practical way for private-sector 
firms to create jobs for low-income men and women.
  In my own city of Boston, private sector companies meld their 
programs with the public service and the summer jobs program. They take 
young people the first year they work in a summer jobs program, and 
they bring them under programs developed by the mayor in conjunction 
with the private sector. Then they search out promising young people in 
the second or third year of the program and put them in line for a good 
job with one of several corporations in the Greater Boston area.
  This is one of the extraordinary examples of the public and private 
sectors working together in an effective and efficient summer jobs 
program. And there are other cities in my Commonwealth that have 
similar efforts.
  Victor Ashe, the Republican mayor of Knoxville and president of the 
U.S. Conference of Mayors, recently contacted Speaker Newt Gingrich and 
urged him to restore funding for the summer jobs program. Republican 
Mayor Tom Murphy of Pittsburgh has emphasized that this program would 
employ 8,000 young men and women this summer in his city to tutor 
youngsters, assist in food pantries and soup kitchens, rehabilitate 
housing, and learn the value of community service programs.
  Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago said, ``The summer jobs program truly 
makes a difference in our lives, and without these jobs, more young 
people will fall prey to drugs, costing society even more down the 
road.''
  Ask any prosecutor in any major urban area about the value of a 
summer jobs program as crime prevention. Ask any police officer working 
on the problems of gangs and violence in local communities and they 
will talk about the value of the summer jobs program.
  This program was developed in the wake of the riots in California. 
Now perhaps we must relearn the lessons of our time with the 
cancellation of these programs.
  Boston Mayor Tom Menino declared the Republicans' misplaced budget 
priorities will be billions for prisons, zero for summer jobs, and 
opportunities. If the Republicans are serious about work, they should 
begin by restoring funding for the summer jobs program. Perhaps they 
intend to put these young Americans to work in the orphanages or the 
prisons they are planning to build.
  The House Republican plan also includes drastic cuts in the School 
Lunch Program, and in nutrition programs for women, infants, and 
children. As many of my colleagues have stated, the famous cry of 
``women and children first,'' is gaining a new, more sinister meaning. 
Women and children are the first to go hungry, the first to suffer, and 
the programs that serve them are the first to be cut.
  Among the programs under attack are the School Lunch Program, which 
feeds 25 million children every day with a hot meal; the School 
Breakfast Program which feeds 6 million children a day; the WIC 
Program, which provides food to 5 million women, infants, and children 
every year, more than 3 million of them children under the age of 5, 
including about 2 million infants; and the Child Care Feeding Program 
which provides food to millions of children in child care every day.
  These are programs being cut. These are the sons and daughters of the 
working parents who need the protection that this Executive order 
provides. Even worse, the Republican plan also lumps into the same 
block grant program the programs that feed senior citizens, to provide 
summer meals for schoolchildren, and special supplement nutrition 
programs for women and infants.
  One of the principal criticisms of the feeding programs, the school-
based programs, is that they stop in the summer. We have seen efforts 
to provide continuing services through the summer, so that we can try 
to make sure that we can adequately support these children. But now we 
move backward.
  This is all against the background of a Carnegie Commission report 
just a few months ago that talked about the permanent effects in terms 
of brain development and behavioral patterns of children, over 1 year 
and under 3 years of age who do not have adequate nutrition.
  We talk about the challenges that exist for children in schools 
today. If we do not provide adequate nutrition for children between 1 
and 3, we are permanently damaging the ability of those children to 
develop their cognitive skills and social skills to survive in a 
complex, difficult, challenging place called school.
  With the Carnegie report, we have just had that evidence presented 
again by thoughtful men and women, Republicans and Democrats, people 
who have spent the last 2 years studying this problem. Nonetheless, we 
see not an expansion of programs targeted toward those children; we see 
a cutback.
  We will hear the answer, ``We are consolidating these programs.'' 
Everyone is for consolidation. Many are for consolidation. We were 
hearing testimony just the other day about what consolidation is going 
to mean.
  According to the General Accounting Office, we are talking about at 
most 5 percent. Maybe 5 percent. We are expecting the States to pick up 
that 5 percent. Come to Massachusetts. Come to Massachusetts, and I 
will show you where it is not being picked up.
  My colleagues say on the floor of the Senate that those Governors 
will pick up the slack. But they are not doing it. They are not doing 
it. And the cutbacks in work-study programs, for example, affect 70,000 
sons and daughters of working families in my State of Massachusetts. 
The State is not helping these sons and daughters of working families. 
Instead, working families are paying higher fees and tuition to go to 
school in my State. That is the rule, not the exception.
  The health needs of the elderly and the poor will be severely cut 
back as well. I noticed the other day that as we talk about these 
working families and their children, we have not even begun to talk 
about cutbacks in chapter 1, which is the program directed toward the 
neediest children.
  We also ought to talk a little bit about what will happen to the 
parents of these working families. Child care is being cut back, food 
programs are being cut back, job opportunities are being cut back.
  If these families live in a colder climate, they face cutbacks in 
energy assistance. This program helps needy, primarily elderly, seniors 
who would like to retain the dignity of living in their own homes 
rather than being dependent upon other members of the family, or 
selling their homes and going to a nursing home, but need some help and 
assistance with the fuel oil. That program is being cut.
  Then we have the chairman of the Finance Committee who has talked 
about $400 billion in cuts in Medicare and Medicaid over the next 7 
years. Cuts of that magnitude will threaten the various academic health 
centers, the hospitals serving the poor, the other health facilities 
that are dependent on Medicare and Medicaid. We had the opportunity 
just a few years ago on the Nunn-Domenici amendment to cap Medicare-
Medicaid. It only failed by five or six votes at that time. We almost 
passed that. It sounded like a pretty good way to cut Government 
spending. But we know what would happen. We would shift it right back 
to the States, they would shift it right to the private sector, and 
they would shift it back to working families who cannot afford it. And 
we move further away from any sensible health care policy.
  So we are talking about our seniors. Our Republican friends propose 
to block grant health funds in a way that would eliminate the Federal 
commitment to early detection and screening of breast and cervical 
cancer. That is an issue that our committee has been working on.
  So, Mr. President, I would just advise seniors and others who have 
incurred higher and higher out-of-pocket medical expenses to keep a 
very close eye on what happens here in terms of Medicare.

[[Page S3718]]

  They should also keep an eye on how any Medicare savings are spent. 
Are they going to finance a cut in the capital gains tax.
  We have already heard discussed in our budget committees the path 
that will lead to significant cuts for the Medicare. I supported the 
President's program last year that would have included some tightening 
in terms of Medicare, targeted not just on recipients but also on 
providers. But those cuts financed important benefits: prescription 
drug benefits for our seniors, community-based care, home care for our 
senior citizens. That plan was an effort to take scarce resources in 
our health care system to make sure they are going to be utilized more 
efficiently, more effectively, more humanely, and more sensibly.
  I listened to my good friend, Harry Reid, today talk about health 
care. I want to assure him that just because we have not been debating 
it on the floor of the Senate yet does not mean we are not going to 
have an opportunity to do so later in this session.
  It is not my purpose this afternoon to get back into the reasons for 
the failure of the health care bill. But hopefully that process can 
lead to a new bipartisan effort. On the first day of this Congress, 
Senator Daschle introduced S. 7 as a vehicle to explore common ground. 
It begins to identify the areas where there has been broad bipartisan 
support for health care reform.
  Health care is not even a part of the Contract With America, not even 
mentioned in the Contract With America, not even referenced in there. 
But the problem has not disappeared. More and more people are not 
covered, more and more people are being squeezed, more and more 
children are failing to get the care they need. The problem is not 
diminishing, the problem is growing. We need to focus on that issue. We 
cannot afford to put that matter to the side.
  Mr. President, I will come back later to some of the other examples 
of callous policies being pursued by the new Republican majority. I see 
my colleague and friend from Illinois here. I just want to say in 
summation that I am just amazed as we gather here in the early part of 
March that this is the issue before us. After spending a number of 
weeks on the issue of the unfunded mandates, which is an enormously 
important issue, and after several weeks on the enormously important 
question of amending our Constitution, now we have an emergency measure 
before the Congress which the Secretary of Defense says we need in a 
timely way, and yet the matter we are now debating is an amendment to 
diminish the protections for working families in this country.
  It is important as we are having this debate to ask: What has the 
Congress been doing with regard to working families during the period 
of the past weeks? What have they been doing? It is important for 
American families to understand what Congress has been doing. Sure, it 
is reported this way or that way that we are trying to cut this kind of 
program to squeeze out administrative costs. Most families are too busy 
trying to make a nickel to really follow in great detail the path that 
is being followed in the House of Representatives and in the Senate of 
the United States.
  I have tried in a brief manner, and will continue to do so, to give 
them some idea of what is happening. Is the measure before us this 
afternoon going to enhance working families, the families that are hard 
pressed, the families that are being held back, held down, whose 
incomes are static, who do not participate in the expanding profits of 
major companies? Is that the matter we are talking about in this new 
Congress, how we are going to do something for those families and give 
them more help, give them more hope, give them a greater future, give 
their children a greater future? Is that what we are talking about here 
on the floor of the U.S. Senate this afternoon? Of course not. 
Tragically we are not. I should not say ``of course not,'' but we are 
not. We are not. The echo of the proposal that is before the U.S. 
Senate is not one that is going to resonate in families tonight and 
lead parents to say, ``All right, it might not help me, but at least it 
is going to help my children.''
  ``It might not help me, but it is going to help one of my children 
get a job this summer.''
  ``It is not going to help me, but maybe it is going to help my 
daughter get a better education.''
  That is not the message. It is not a message that says, ``It is not 
going to do much for me and my family, but for my parents, who worked 
hard over their lifetime, it is going to mean a little greater hope for 
them.'' That is not the message.
  What is it saying to all those I mentioned earlier, what it is saying 
to Cynthia Zavalas, a person just about making minimum wage as part of 
a family that has worked 57 years in a company? It is saying: You have 
been permanently replaced, effectively fired, and we are not going to 
help.
  The Executive order will not get her job back, but it says that we 
are not going to give an additional financial reward to the company 
that has treated her poorly. That is what we are saying. And it is just 
because of that simple concept that this measure involving our national 
security is being delayed.
  I am always amazed around here about how we spend our time and what 
we spend our time fighting for or fighting against. This is one of the 
examples that really takes the cake.
  Mr. President, I see my colleague and friend, and others, on the 
floor. I yield the floor.
  Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gregg). The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I have come over here to the floor this 
afternoon believing that the subject was the President's almost 
certainly unlawful Executive order with respect to striking 
replacements. I have not understood the debate was going to be on the 
entire panoply of social programs piled up over the course of the last 
20 or 30 or 40 years on the backs of the people of the United States. 
But I think comments on those programs do deserve at least a certain 
degree of response.
  Last week, many of the most eloquent proponents of a wide range of 
social and cultural programs voted to reject the constitutional 
amendment requiring a balanced budget. Many of them, at least, on the 
grounds that it should be the Congress itself which provides the 
necessary discipline to protect future generations from the 
consequences of our propensity to run up huge unpaid debts.
 And yet when it comes to any criticism, any reduction in even the 
growth rate of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of those programs, the 
proponents of fiscal responsibility are denounced as uncaring and 
indifferent to the needs of the American people.

  Perhaps that argument would carry some weight if the growth of those 
programs had been accompanied by greater opportunities, a higher degree 
of family stability, more unity--in other words, had been accompanied 
by some demonstrable success as a result of all of those spending 
programs.
  Of course, the contrary is true. During exactly the period of time 
during which there have been growing social and economic challenges to 
this country, deterioration of the society of this country has 
accompanied the growth of those programs hand in hand.
  That does not prove in and of itself a cause and effect relationship, 
Mr. President, but it certainly makes dubious the proposition so 
eloquently presented here by the Senator from Massachusetts. The real 
burden which we have imposed on the people of the United States is the 
burden of debt, a burden which day after day, week after week, month 
after month, constricts our ability to provide jobs and opportunities 
for the people of this country.
  We need a change in direction, and the debate here today, as it was 
last week and the week before, is paradoxically between those who over 
the years have been known as conservatives but who now believe that 
radical changes are necessary for this country, and those who have led 
the drive for all of these social programs, these spending programs, 
one piled on top of another, who are now so intensely conservative that 
we hear from them no desire for any change whatsoever, save perhaps to 
spend more money on programs which have not worked in the past.
  The true proponents of the status quo are those who constantly fight 
against any change in our spending priorities whatsoever, who ask for 
more of the 
[[Page S3719]] very programs which have been associated with a decline 
not just in our society and our economy but even our civility.
  I am firmly convinced, Mr. President, that we need a new way, a new 
direction. The failure to take that new direction, that new road last 
week has been accompanied in the last week by a substantial loss in the 
value of our currency, the dollar, a substantial loss in confidence in 
nations and among people overseas in our seriousness in the retention 
of our leadership. If we cannot pass a constitutional amendment for a 
balanced budget, at least we have to be willing to do something about 
out-of-control spending programs even though we are almost certain to 
be criticized, no matter how small the changes in our priorities, as 
being somehow or another unfeeling. We are not unfeeling, Mr. 
President. It is our set of policies that will provide true opportunity 
for the people of the country in the future.
  And now to the amendment proposed by my distinguished colleague and 
seatmate, the Senator from Kansas [Mrs. Kassebaum].
  I believe that, as important as the issue of striker replacement is, 
the issue of who can make such rules under our constitutional system is 
even more important. This debate is not so much over the merits or lack 
of merits of striker replacement as it is over the wrong, and I believe 
almost certainly unlawful, action of the President of the United States 
to attempt to impose by fiat, by dictate, a policy which has been 
rejected explicitly in a long series of debates by the Congress of the 
United States.
  This action, Mr. President, is without precedent. This action is 
clearly in defiance of laws relating to labor/management relationships 
dating back some 60 years, expressly interpreted and approved by the 
Supreme Court of the United States, and debated in each of the last 
several Congresses without change. And yet, in spite of this statutory 
history, in spite of this judicial history, in spite of this political 
history, the President of the United States purports to change those 
rules. When his action is challenged, Mr. President, I am convinced 
that it will be overturned by the courts as entirely unlawful and 
beyond his authority.
  However, we should not wait passively, without reaction, to have the 
constitutional separation of powers be upheld by the courts of the 
United States. We should take that action ourselves. We should take 
that action ourselves, whatever our views on the merits of striker 
replacement, but simply to protect the rights and the duties of the 
elected representatives of the people of the United States to make 
fundamental determinations about statutory policies with respect to 
labor-management relations.
  That is the issue, Mr. President, with respect to the Kassebaum 
amendment. And it is for that reason that all Members of this body who 
care about the Constitution and the laws and about the separation of 
powers should vote for this amendment, whatever their views on the 
merits of the underlying policy itself.
  I am convinced that the Senator from Kansas should be commended. She 
has a special responsibility as the chairman of the Senate Committee on 
Labor. She is carrying out her duties under difficult circumstances, 
knowing that the issue itself is a contentious one, but she by this 
action has reminded us of our duties which we should now undertake to 
perform.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I wish to congratulate and compliment my 
colleague, Senator Kassebaum, from Kansas, for her amendment. I think 
it is regrettable that her amendment is necessary.
  I heard one of my colleagues say is this not terrible that here the 
Republicans are and they have this amendment--this is an antiworker 
amendment. I totally disagree. This amendment is necessary because of 
an Executive order by the President of the United States to circumvent 
Congress and circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court. Congress has clearly 
stated its will or its desire to keep the law to where employers have 
the right to hire replacement workers. This President--and the Vice 
President, I might mention, because I caught part of his speech that he 
made to the leadership of the AFL-CIO in a speech in Florida--wants to 
overturn that by Executive order. They want to change law by Executive 
order.
  The President of the United States is President, but he is not king, 
and he cannot pass law by Executive order. I totally agree with my 
friend, Senator Gorton, from Washington, who said this Executive order 
will be determined unconstitutional. It clearly will. It is not a valid 
Executive order. It will not stand the test of time. It will not stand 
up in a test in court. Clearly it is the President exceeding his 
Presidential authority and power, and it is a flagrant abuse of power.
  I am reading this Executive order. If my colleagues have not seen it, 
I would encourage them to read it. Just looking at the Executive 
order--this is dated March 8--it talks about, in the first paragraph:

       The * * * Government must assist the entities with which it 
     has contractual relations to develop stable relationships 
     with their employees.

  Why is that a Federal Government responsibility? It says the Federal 
Government ``must.'' According to the President's Executive order, they 
will be forced to.
  It goes on to say:

       All discretion under this Executive order shall be 
     exercised consistent with this policy.

  ``All discretion.''

       The Secretary of Labor may investigate an organizational 
     unit of a Federal contractor to determine whether the unit 
     has permanently replaced lawfully striking workers. Such 
     investigation shall be conducted in accordance with 
     procedures established by the Secretary.

  We are going to give the Secretary of Labor great latitude to 
investigate something that he might determine is illegal and, if he so 
determines, then he can bar them from any Federal contracts.
  Let us just take as an example, let us say, a defense contractor. 
Maybe they are working on building a nuclear aircraft carrier or 
fighter aircraft planes, the F-16 or F-14 or something along that line. 
Maybe there is a division within their unit that is having a strike, 
and that employer has a contract with the U.S. Government to produce 
those planes on time or to make this part on time so they can stay on 
time and on schedule and not be overpriced.
  You could have the Secretary of Labor determine: Wait a minute, this 
is a violation. Therefore, you are going to lose this contract.
  What if they are 70 percent through with the contract? We are going 
to get a new contractor to come in and finish the aircraft carrier? We 
are going to have a new contractor come in and try to pick up with the 
delivery on the F-16? I do not think so.
  Talk about discretion for the Secretary. I was wondering how this 
section 11 of this Executive order--it says:

       The meaning of the term ``organizational unit of a Federal 
     contractor'' as used in this order shall be defined in 
     regulations that shall be issued by the Secretary of Labor, 
     in consultation with the affected agencies. This order shall 
     apply only to contracts--

  And on and on. So they are going to give the Secretary of Labor total 
discretion to determine whatever organizational unit might apply. If 
they have a strike and they hire permanent replacement workers, then 
they are totally banned or barred from Federal work.
  How much would that cost the Federal Government, if you disrupt a 
contract right in the middle of procuring a particular product or 
completing a contract? It could cost a lot of money.
  Talk about caving in to a special interest group--and I do not say 
caving in to organized labor, I say caving in to leadership of 
organized labor. This is not a benefit to benefit labor. This is a 
benefit to say the Federal Government, under this administration, 
thinks they should be involved in labor-management disputes.
  I heard my colleague say this is not about the underlying issue. One 
should vote for the Kassebaum amendment regardless of how they feel 
about striker replacement. I agree with that statement, because clearly 
the President has exceeded his authority, both against the will of 
Congress and against previous court rulings.
  [[Page S3720]] On the underlying issue the President is wrong as 
well. Individuals certainly should have the right to organize. They 
have the right to strike. If they do not want to work, they should not 
have to work. But, likewise, an employer has to have the right to hire 
permanent replacement workers to keep the doors open, to keep the plant 
running, to make the contracts, to meet the schedules, to be on budget 
or under budget.
  Then this President's Executive order says: No, if you hire permanent 
replacement workers, you are going to lose any Federal contracts, you 
are going to be debarred, you will not be able to do Federal 
contracting.
  This is an outrageous power grab, and it will not stand the test of 
time. It should not stand. I hope my friends and colleagues will 
support Senator Kassebaum in her amendment. She happens to be right. I 
wish it was not necessary.
  I might mention, after the President made mention of his Executive 
order, we wrote the President a letter and said by what authority do 
you do this? The President does not have the authority to do this. The 
President does not have the authority to do by Executive order a 
statutory change, to change the law. Yet that is exactly what he is 
trying to do. His efforts will not succeed. They should not succeed.
  I encourage my colleagues to support the Senator from Kansas in this 
amendment, and I hope it will prevail.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I wonder if I might ask for unanimous 
consent to speak for 5 minutes as though in morning business so as not 
to interrupt this debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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