Congressional Record, Volume 141 Issue 44 (Thursday, March 9, 1995)

[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 44 (Thursday, March 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3720-S3730]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS AND RESCISSIONS ACT

The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I would like to respond for a moment,
and then defer to my colleagues from Massachusetts and Illinois because
I had an ample amount of time to speak this mornings. I will not take
more than 5 minutes.
I want to make two points. I made them this morning. I would like to
be as concise as possible.
The first point is I think the issue is very clear. Senators can vote
different ways on this question. The President's Executive order says
that when the U.S. Government has a contract with a company, a
contractor which in turn permanently replaces its workers during a
strike, then our Government will
[[Page S3721]] not be using taxpayer dollars to support future
contracts with such a company. It is a simple proposition. Which side
is the Government on?
What we are saying is that our Government is on the side of workers,
of middle-class people, of working families. It is very simple. One
more time it is a shame that our country has not joined many other
advanced economies with legislation that would prohibit this permanent
replacement of workers. I think we would have passed that bill if not
for a filibuster in the last session. That is in fact what happened.
The second point. I think it is extremely important that--as much as
I respect the Senator from Kansas, I think she is one of the finest
Senators--I believe that her amendment is profoundly mistaken because I
think this Executive order is extremely important.
The second point is that I do not think that you can separate this
amendment that we are speaking against from the overall Contract With
America which has just represented an attack on men and women who are
trying to work for decent wages, on children, on the whole question of
higher education being affordable for families, on the question of
whether or not people are going to be able to afford health care. These
issues become very interrelated.
In that sense, this debate and this vote is about more than this
amendment. To be able to be work at a job that pays a decent wage so
that you can support your family is very closely tied to whether or not
you have collective bargaining rights, very closely tied to whether or
not you have some assurance that if a company forces you out on strike,
if nobody wants to go out on strike, what will then happen is that you
will essentially not be permanently replaced and crushed. That is what
this is all about, protection for many workers, many employees, and
many of their families. That is what this is all about.
For the life of me, Mr. President--I conclude on this because I spoke
this morning--I simply do not understand why some of my colleagues make
such serious objection to this proposition.
I yield the floor.
Mr. SIMON addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I spoke earlier today in opposition to the
amendment by the Senator from Kansas.
I would like to point out a couple of things. I mentioned this
morning that permanent striker replacement is against the law in a
number of countries, and someone apparently has since questioned
whether that is true in Japan because I list Japan as one of the
countries where it is illegal.
Let me quote article 7, section 1 of the labor union law of Japan.

The employer shall not engage in the following practices:
(1) discharge or show discriminatory treatment towards a
worker by reason of his being a member of a labor union or
having tried to join or organize a labor union or having
performed an appropriate act of a labor union * * *

Now I would like to quote from the Congressional Research Service.

The words ``an appropriate act of a labor union'' are
construed to include acts arising from collective bargaining
with the employer, such as strikes, picketing, and so on.
Therefore, under Japanese law it is unlawful for an employer
to discharge a striking employee.

In other words, what President Clinton has done is to give through
Executive order workers in the United States the same protection that
workers in Japan, Italy, the Western European nations have, with the
exception of Great Britain. The only Western industrialized nations
that do not offer this protection are Great Britain, Hong Kong,
Singapore, and the United States of America. This morning someone
pointed out to me that I failed to mention Greece as one of the nations
that has this particular stipulation.
When my friend from Oklahoma, Senator Nickles, mentioned that the
action is unprecedented and invalid, the courts would find it invalid.
Let the courts decide--not the Senate of the United States on an
emergency supplemental appropriations for the Department of Defense.
Mr. KENNEDY. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. SIMON. I am pleased to yield to my colleague from Massachusetts.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I notice that the Senator from Oklahoma
had been talking about the amendment of the Senator from Kansas and
raising questions about what would happen to the Defense Department
should they have a contract, for example, on the F-16 or F-18. I take
pride that most of the engines for the military are manufactured at a
General Electric plant in Lynn, MA. There are some Pratt & Whitney
engines by our good neighbors in Connecticut--but for the most part the
engine parts are manufactured in my State. The company does absolutely
spectacular work on the new advanced fighters and beyond that.
The question was raised by the Senator from Oklahoma, what would
happen to these engines should this major contractor go out and have
these striker replacements. Well I was watching the sports program last
night where we saw those replacement players trying out for the major
leagues. And I think it is every young boy's goal to play in the
majors.
But I sure would not want our pilots, our servicemen and women, if
they had to be called back to the Persian Gulf or elsewhere to have to
be flying planes manufactured by replacement workers, or those engines
being made by replacement workers, or those weapons systems, which
could be the difference between life and death. Does the Senator agree
with me that one of the principal reasons for this kind of Executive
order is to make sure that we are going to have thorough, professional,
competent, highly skilled, highly trained, and highly disciplined
workers doing a job for America? I am just wondering whether the
Senator reaches a similar conclusion.
Mrs. KASSEBAUM. I wonder if the Senator will yield for a question?
Mr. SIMON. I have the floor, and I would like to respond to his
question, and then I will be happy to yield to the Senator for a
question. I think the point made by the Senator from Massachusetts is
absolutely valid. You can be a good, sincere person, but just not be a
good replacement baseball player or person working in an airplane
factory. I am going to be leaving the U.S. Senate after 1996. The
Chicago White Sox are not interested in me. I cannot understand it, but
that is the reality. Michael Jordan was a great basketball player, but
he did not do very well on the baseball field.
I think the point made by my colleague from Massachusetts, Senator
Kennedy, is extremely important. We find, even where you do not have
permanent replacements, sometimes factories try to keep going and the
results have not been quality products. When we are talking about the
defense industry, we want quality production. I point out also to
Senator Kennedy that France makes military equipment. They sell planes,
and they prohibit permanent striker replacement. Germany makes weapons;
they prohibit permanent striker replacement. Italy manufactures
military equipment; they prohibit permanent striker replacements. I
have not heard from anyone that has said that, in any way, inhibited
them from moving ahead. My colleague from Kansas wishes to ask a
question.
Mrs. KASSEBAUM. I thought I heard the Senator from Massachusetts
suggest that permanent replacement workers would not be able to offer
the same type and quality of work. Would you feel any safer with
temporary replacement workers, because this Executive order permits
temporary replacements? So I think, if the question was what type and
quality of work will be done by the permanent replacements, I suggest
it could be far more risky with temporary workers.
Mr. SIMON. I say to my friend from Kansas that if she wants to go
further and prohibit temporary striker replacement, I will support that
endeavor. As a matter of fact, Quebec does that right now. Canada, as a
whole, prohibits permanent striker replacements. In Quebec, you cannot
even have temporary striker replacement. But whether they are temporary
or permanent, there is no question that striker replacement results in
a diminution of quality of the end product. The point made by Senator
Kennedy is an absolutely valid point.
Let me make a couple of other points while I have the floor, Mr.
President. When the Senator from Oklahoma says Congress has clearly
stated its opinion
[[Page S3722]] on striker replacement, that is true, only it is not
quite the way it was implied by my friend, Senator Nickles. The reality
is that the House of Representatives passed a bill to prohibit striker
replacement, and in the U.S. Senate, 53 Members went on record for
this, a majority in the U.S. Senate--53-47. But because of our
filibuster rule, we did not pass a law.
When the Senator from Oklahoma says Congress has clearly stated its
opinion, he is correct. But contrary to the situation when in 1991, a
number of people, including the present Speaker and present majority
leader of the House, introduced legislation that would have required
employees to be notified in writing that they could not be required to
join a union, that did not pass either body. But George Bush issued an
Executive order requiring that notices be put up in all workplaces
telling employees that they are not required to join a union.
To my knowledge, no one tried to reverse that. We recognize the
authority of the President to issue that kind of a statement.
Finally, Mr. President, I see my friend from Texas anxiously waiting
a chance to get the floor. Because we have had a discussion of social
issues, and the Senator from Washington, Senator Gorton, said that
there has been no demonstrable success in our social programs, the
reality is, as we have pared down the appropriations for our social
programs, more and more of our children are living in poverty. We,
today, have 23 percent of the children of the United States living in
poverty--far more than any other Western industrialized nation. That is
not, as I have said on the floor of this Senate before, an act of God;
that is a result of flawed policies. We have to show greater sympathy
and concern and we need to have programs to help people.
We are on one of these basic philosophical arguments here: Should
Government tilt against working men and women, or should it not? I
think Government should not tilt against working men and women. I think
that is the fundamental issue here.
Mr. President, I yield the floor. I see the Senator from Texas, and I
am sure he will agree with every word I have said here.
Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I know it does not have anything to do with
the debate we are having, but I want to answer two questions that were
posed by our colleagues.
Let me go back to the Executive order issued by President Bush,
because the Executive order issued by President Bush was to enforce a
Supreme Court decision called the Beck decision. I am not terribly
proud of the fact that Executive order was delayed for 2 years before
it was finally issued. The Beck decision came about when a man named
Beck, who was working in a State that permitted mandatory unionism,
said that part of his dues were being used for political purposes and
that he did not support the political aim of organized labor. So Mr.
Beck, through long court battles that ultimately reached the Supreme
Court, argued that his constitutional rights were being violated,
because he was being forced to provide money for political purposes
that he did not support.
The Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Beck was right and ordered that he
and every other worker be told how much of their union dues went for
purposes other than to fund collective bargaining. President Bush and
the Bush administration, after delaying the implementation of that
ruling, finally issued an Executive order to implement it.
So the Beck decision was based on a Supreme Court ruling having to do
with the constitutional rights of a worker.
It is hardly worth arguing the point raised by our dear colleague
from Massachusetts when he asked if our men in combat want spare parts
produced by replacement workers? Well, if the alternative is no spare
parts, the answer is clearly, yes.
None of this, however, has anything to do with this issue. People
want to cloak this issue in the union-management cloak. And since there
are more people who work than people who hire workers, it is a good
cloak in which to try to hide that which is a legitimate issue of
freedom. But the issue involved here could not be clearer, no matter
how you define it, when looking at the rights of a free people.
If I do not want to work for you, I have the right to quit, and no
one can deny me that right as a free person. But if I do not want to
work for you, I do not have a right to keep you from hiring somebody
else.
What is being proposed here is that the Government step in and say,
oh, it is all right, if I decide not to work for you, for me to quit;
but if I decide to quit through a strike--even though it may put you
out of business, even though it may decimate the city in which your
company is located--you cannot hire people to take my place. Now, you
can hire temporary workers, who have to be fired the minute I want to
come back, which means in reality that the company has almost an
impossible time finding people to work for it. So what you are doing,
in essence, is giving one party to a labor contract the right to put
the other party out of business.
We have debated this issue. It has been debated many times in
Congress. It was debated in the last Congress when the Democratic Party
had a majority in both Houses of Congress. And under the rules that we
operate under, as a free society and as the greatest deliberative body
in history, it was rejected. Those who supported taking away the rights
of an employer to hire another worker when a worker refused to work for
that employer were defeated in the U.S. Senate.
Now President Clinton has come in and said that what he could not do
through the legislative process, he is going to do through Executive
order; that by Executive order, he is going to say to any company that
has a contract with the Federal Government of over $100,000, that the
Secretary of Labor will be empowered to say to those companies that if
you have a strike and the strikers will not come back to work, you
cannot hire permanent replacement workers who want to work to keep your
company in business. And if you do hire permanent replacement workers,
we have the right to take away and break any Government contract you
have and bar you from getting any contracts with the Federal
Government.
There are a lot of gray areas here, but as I read this, if General
Dynamics--of course now Lockheed of Fort Worth--had a sand and gravel
operation, in addition building F-16's, and they had a strike in their
sand and gravel operation that shut them down as the major employer in
a small town in North Carolina, and that small town had lots of
unemployment and many people who were willing to come to work in sand
and gravel extraction, those people could not come on as permanent
employees because General Dynamics would have its contracts in Fort
Worth with the Federal Government abrogated.
Mr. President, why, in a free society, should we want to do this?
Why, in a free society, should we say to someone who, after all, has
put up their capital, saved all their lives to start a business,
created jobs--which people voluntarily took and voluntarily decide
leave--that they are prohibited from hiring somebody else who wants to
do the work? Why should we do that?
Well, there is no argument for doing that other than greedy special
interests.
A President who says that he is some new kind of Democrat, whatever
that means, a President who says that he was coming to Washington to
end the cozy special-interest way of doing business, comes to
Washington, and by Executive order, gives one of the largest and most
powerful special-interest groups in America the right to intimidate and
the right to destroy people's businesses. It is not right.
This ought to be stopped, not because of labor and management rights;
it ought to be stopped for the very simple reason that it is
fundamentally and profoundly wrong to do this.
What the President is doing is using the contract power of the
Federal Government to deny people their rights. What he is doing is
denying the rights of the people who have put up their life savings,
who have started businesses, and who want to provide jobs when there is
a strike. The people who had the jobs do not want to do the work.
Under our existing laws, under our legal system, if other people are
willing to come in--and often subject
[[Page S3723]] themselves to all kinds of intimidation, both physical
and verbal--and take a job and work because they want the job, they
have that right. The Congress voted on this issue and the President was
unable to prevail. He certainly could not prevail in this Congress,
because Americans, based on the areas where he did prevail, said no to
exactly this kind of special-interest deal.
Now the President is trying to do this by Executive order. What we
are trying to do is to stop the President. This is within the
prerogative of Congress to make the law of the land. And I do not think
anybody here who looks at this will see this as anything more than a
payoff to special interest.
I do not know what is going to happen on this amendment. I understand
there is going to be a motion to table. There may be a point of order.
I, for one, am going to vote to overrule the Chair on this issue.
And I want to promise my colleagues this issue is not going to go
away. I do not know how many times we are going to debate it, but I am
determined that the President is not going to win on this issue,
because it is not right. I can assure you that, in good time, when the
American people finish the job they started in 1994, if this Executive
order is still standing, it will not be standing much longer after
1996.
But this is a very important issue. This is a freedom issue. This
does not have anything to do with unions. This does not have anything
to do with employers. It has to do with the right of a free people to
withhold their labor and the right of the employer to hire somebody
else who is willing to work.
To get into all of this jargon about collective bargaining confuses
the issue and is an attempt to cloak the fact that we are really
talking about the rights of a free people.
I am going to do everything I can, as one Member of the Senate, to
stop the President from limiting the freedom of employers, people who
put up their capital, to hire replacement workers when the people who
are currently working refuse to work. And I am going to do it not
because of labor versus management, or management versus labor, but
because you either believe in freedom or you do not, and I do. I think
this is a fundamental issue.
I congratulate our colleague for bringing this issue up. I want to
urge her to stand by this issue. I would rather lose on a technicality
and continue to fight this issue than to pull this down and allow the
President to do this. He may be successful. But I think people ought to
know where our party stands and where our Members stand. We are opposed
to this kind of special-interest power grab and political payoff,
because it is fundamentally wrong and it is fundamentally rotten, and
it ought to be stopped.
So I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, whether we vote on
a motion to table or whether we vote on the germaneness rule--we have
overruled germaneness on many occasions, and it takes simply a
majority. I think that we ought to do it in this case. If we cannot do
it this time, we will have a lot more bills that this President is
going to want to pass. He will face this issue on each and every one of
them until finally we prevent this outrage from occurring.
I yield the floor.
Mr. BYRD addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I have listened to the distinguished Senator
from Texas with great interest. Let me say to begin with that I am not
a strong apostle of Executive orders. I suppose they number into the
thousands. There have been Executive orders going back over many, many
decades.
Some things that the distinguished senior Senator from Texas said
have caught me with a strong sense of fascination. He talked about this
Executive order's being a ``political payoff'' by the President. It
seems to me that we allow ourselves sometimes to make some very extreme
statements. I do not know that that statement by the Senator from Texas
can be documented. I do not know that it can be proved. I think it is a
rather reckless charge. I would assume that those Members, like myself,
who oppose this amendment might likewise be charged with political
payoffs, if that theory is carried to its ultimate conclusion.
Let me say to the distinguished Senator that he has no monopoly on
standing up for freedom--freedom of conscience, freedom of the
individual to work. When God drove Adam and Eve from the garden, he
issued an edict that has followed man through the course of the dusty
centuries and will accompany man to the end of his days: ``In the sweat
of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for
out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou
return.''
The distinguished Senator from Texas speaks of ``intimidation.'' I
can remember the days when the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency was
brought into West Virginia.
The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency was headquartered in Roanoke,
Virginia and Bluefield, West Virginia.
The Roanoke office operated primarily as railroad detectives.
The Bluefield office, headed by Tom Felts, operated primarily as mine
guards. They were originally employed by the coal companies to police
the unincorporated coal company towns. As the union movement began to
grow, they began to serve more and more as union busters. The miners
would call them ``thugs.''
It became their primary job to keep union organizers out of the
company towns. If the miners went on strike, they evicted the miners
from the company houses, and used whatever means necessary to break the
strike, from bullying the miners, to beating, and even murdering.
The Baldwin-Felts operated throughout southern West Virginia with the
exception of Logan County. In that county, Sheriff Don Chafin
maintained a 200-man deputy sheriff force, allegedly in the pay of the
coal companies in Logan County, and it was their job to keep the union
organizers out of the county.
I mentioned that Tom Felts headed the Bluefield office. His brothers,
Lee and Albert, both Baldwin-Felts mine guards, were two of the eight
guards who were killed in the Matewan Massacre.
The coal miners of West Virginia have seen intimidation. I grew up in
a coal miner's home. I can remember when there was no union. The man
who raised me, who was kind enough to take me as an orphan--I was 1
year old--and brought me up in his home, was a coal miner. I can
remember the days when he worked from daylight until after dark to
``clean up his place.''
That meant that a coal miner, if he did not clean up his working
place, if he did not remove all the slate, the coal, and the rock, that
had been shot down with dynamite, if he did not clean it up before he
left that night, was told that there was always someone else who would
be glad to take his place. There was no union to protect his job.
The coal miners took what they were given. They had no weapon with
which to fight back. Many times as a boy I recall going down to the
company store at Stotesbury, in Raleigh County where I lived, and
reading on the bulletin board a notice that, come the beginning of the
next month, the miners would suffer a cut in their wages. The price per
ton of slate, the price per ton of coal, would be reduced from 50 cents
to 45 cents, or to 30 cents or to 25 cents.
In those days coal miners wore their carbide lamps on cloth caps.
They had no way of demanding that safety be enforced in the workplace.
They bought their own dynamite, they bought their augur, their pick,
their ax, their shovel. I have been in the mines, and I have seen where
my dad worked. I could hear the timbers cracking to the right, the
timbers cracking to the left.
I saw the water holes through which those men had to make their way
on their knees. The roof was not high enough for them to walk upright.
They had to walk on their knees. They had to shovel that coal, shovel
the rock and heap those cars with the loads of slack or lump coal or
slate or rock or whatever it was, while on their knees.
They had no way of demanding that their pay be increased. They just
had to take whatever the company decided at a given time to pay them.
There was no union. I was there when the coal miners union came to West
Virginia, the coal miners union. I can remember the coal miners having
to meet, in
[[Page S3724]] barns, in empty buildings, clandestinely, in order to
organize a union.
Many times I have seen my dad overdrafted on payday. He had worked
the full 2 weeks, and on payday was in debt to the coal company. Then
when the union came, I saw the faces of those coal miners. The faces
would light up. At last, the coal miners had a weapon with which they
could bargain collectively concerning their wages and their working
conditions. They could strike, if need be, to force the company to
improve health and safety conditions, and to enforce safety in the
workplace.
Many times I walked into the miners' bathhouse at Stotesbury--not
many times, but several times I walked into the bathhouse at
Stotesbury--as a boy and as a young man and I saw stretched out on the
bathhouse floor a dead coal miner who had been electrocuted or run over
by a mine motor. One of my friends, Walter Lovell, had both legs--both
legs--cut off one night by a runaway motor. In this day and time, his
life might have been saved.
But he died of loss of blood and gangrene. My own dad mashed his
fingernail. He lost his finger. If it had been 2 or 3 days later before
going to the hospital, he would have lost a hand. Another week, he may
have lost his life.

I can remember seeing a man in the coal mining company's doctor's
office at Stotesbury, waiting in great pain because he had mashed his
finger and gangrene had set in. Within a few days, he was dead.
The distinguished Senator from Texas used the phrase ``they don't
want to work,'' ``don't want to work.'' Perhaps they do not want to
work because they want certain safety conditions improved. It is not
laziness always. Now, I have not always agreed with the unions, and on
some occasions, I have not sympathized with strikes. There have been
some strikes that I thought were not called for. But because miners or
other workers seek to improve their safety conditions, their working
conditions, their wages is not a matter of their not wanting to work.
When I ran for the U.S. Senate, I was initially opposed by John L.
Lewis, the coal miner's chieftain. He eventually came around to support
me, but the thing that made my decision to run for the U.S. Senate, may
I say to the Senator from Texas, the thing that made the decision for
me to run for the U.S. Senate was the very fact that Mr. John L. Lewis,
the president of the United Mine Workers, sent word to me in West
Virginia not to run for the Senate, but instead to run again for the
House of Representatives.
I had been elected to the House three times, and I decided I would
like to get around the State during a break between the sessions and
determine what kind of support I would have for a Senate race. While I
was in Wheeling, West Virginia, one night, I got word from a man by the
name of Bob Howe, representing the United Mine Workers of America--John
L. Lewis' liaison man working on the House side.
While I was in West Virginia, Mr. Howe called me on the telephone and
said, ``I'd like to talk with you. When will you be back in
Washington?''
I said, ``I don't know when I'll be back. What do you want to talk
about?''
He said, ``Well, `the boss'''--the boss--``wants me to get a message
to you.''
I said, ``Well, the closest I will be to Washington for several weeks
will be when I go to Romney next Thursday night to speak to a Lion's
Club,'' or whatever it was, a civic organization.
He said, ``Fine, I will come over there and meet you.''
So he drove over to Romney, West Virginia. We met. The message was
from Mr. John L. Lewis, who sent word that he did not want me to run
for the Senate; Mr. Lewis wanted me to run for reelection to the House.
He said, ``You have a good labor record. We will be glad to support
you for the House, but if you run for the Senate, Mr. Lewis will come
into West Virginia and campaign against you. He will campaign for
William Marland,'' who was a former Governor of West Virginia. So I
said to Mr. Howe, ``I'll be in touch with you.''
That very night, I drove south into Beckley, WV. Those were the days
when we had nothing better than a two-lane road in West Virginia. We
did not have four-lane roads in West Virginia. I can remember the days
when we did not have two-lane roads in West Virginia and when we even
had to blow the horn on the car when we went around a curve.
In any event, I drove to southern West Virginia that night, and on
the way, I stopped at a telephone booth in Petersburg, Grant County,
which, by the way, is a strong Republican county, about 4-to-1
Republican, and goes for Robert C. Byrd.
Snow was up around my ankles when I went into that telephone booth. I
called my wife and I said, ``Erma, I've reached my decision.''
She asked, ``Concerning what?''
I said, ``Running for the Senate.'' I said, ``I've made up my mind.''
``What made your mind up?''
I said, ``John L. Lewis. When he threatened to come into West
Virginia and campaign against me, that made my decision.''
She was back here in Arlington in our little five-room house at that
time, taking care of our young daughters and the dog. We had a dog
named Billy. That was Billy Byrd I. We now have Billy Byrd II.
I drove south and got into Beckley in the early morning, called a few
people in southern West Virginia, called in the press, and I said,
``I'm going to be a candidate for the Senate. William C. Marland is
going to be my opponent, and John L. Lewis is going to come into the
State and support Mr. Marland.''
Not long thereafter, Senator Matthew M. Neely, a Senator from the
State of West Virginia, died. Instead of Mr. Marland's running against
me, he filed for the unexpired seat of Mr. Neely. It was then that Mr.
Lewis asked me to come downtown and see him at his office. The coal
miners in West Virginia had been upset at the prospect that Mr. Lewis
had planned to support Mr. Marland against Robert Byrd.
So I went downtown to meet with Mr. Lewis at his office. Mr. Lewis
looked at me with those twinkling blue eyes that seemed to pierce right
through me, and said, ``Young man, I resented your announcing that I
would come into West Virginia and support Bill Marland against you. I'm
in the habit of making my own press announcements.''
And I said, ``Well, Mr. Lewis, you are a great labor leader. My dad
was a coal miner. I can remember when there weren't any unions and
today there are 125,000 coal miners in West Virginia, and they are in
your union.
You have been a good labor leader. And the union has been good for the
coal miners. But when you sent Mr. Howe into West Virginia to tell me
to run for the House again, not run for the Senate, and that you would
come into West Virginia and campaign for Marland against me, I resented
that. And that made up my mind. That made my decision to run for the
Senate. Mr. Lewis became a strong supporter, and we were friends until
his death.

I say this just to say to my friend from Texas that some of us who
oppose this amendment today do not feel that we are paying off any debt
to any special-interest group.
I was opposed by Mr. George Titler, the president of the United Mine
Workers, district 29, when I ran for the West Virginia State Senate in
1950. Why? He called me into his office after I was elected to the
House of Delegates in 1946, before the first meeting of the House of
Delegates in the session of 1947, and told me he wanted me to vote for
a certain individual for Speaker of the House of Delegates. I said, I
can't do it. I'm going to vote for his opponent.
I told him why. I said, ``In the first place, I have assured this man
I would vote for him. In the second place, I have been told by those
who serve in the legislature that he is the better man. I am going to
vote for him as I promised.'' Whereupon Mr. Titler said, ``When you run
for reelection, we will remember you.'' Consequently, in 1948, when
Harry Truman ran for reelection, the leadership of the United Mine
Workers in that district was opposed to my reelection.
Here I was, a little old Member of the House of Delegates, running
for reelection to the House of Delegates in a big election. There were
many other offices at stake. Yet, the headquarters of the UMWA District
office concentrated on that poor little old coal miner's son's run for
reelection to the House of
[[Page S3725]] Delegates. I won the election. Do you know how I did it?
I went right down into the local union meetings with my campaign.
George Titler even visited the Stotesbury local union--of which my
dad was a member--and urged those miners to vote against me. I sat in
on the meeting, and when Mr. Titler completed his speech, I spoke to
the coal miners; I spoke their language. And they gave me their
overwhelming support.
The distinguished Senator from Texas speaks of those who invest
capital. We have to have investors of capital. They have helped to make
this country a great country. But what is the working man's capital?
The working man's capital, my old coal miner dad's capital, his only
capital was his hands and the sweat of his face. God had laid that
penalty upon man: ``In the sweat of Thy face shalt thou eat bread.''
There is nothing more noble than honest toil. And so it is, that I
stand today against this amendment. Intimidation works two ways. No
longer is the coal miner intimidated. No longer is he driven as with a
lash. ``Clean up your place; if you don't, there is somebody else
waiting for your job.'' No longer does the coal miner have to buy at
the company store.
Something can be said, of course, pro and con, about almost
everything. I have never been ruled by any union. They know that. I
have never worn any man's collar but my own--none. The Governor of West
Virginia once asked me to get off the Democratic ticket. I said no.
I could tell the Senator from Texas many stories, I think, which
would perhaps delight him because I stood up against the top leadership
in the union, but the rank and file coal miner stood with Robert C.
Byrd. They knew I was their friend. I was their friend then. I will
always be their friend.

The Senator may very well remember an occasion when I offered an
amendment here to help the coal miners and fought hard for it. I went
to the offices of Republicans and Democrats in the interest of my coal
miners amendment. The then majority leader, Mr. Mitchell, was against
me. The then minority leader, Mr. Dole, was against me. The President,
Mr. Bush, was against me. I had the battle won until right there in the
well of the Senate, the joint leadership peeled off three votes that
had looked me in the eye and said they would vote for my amendment.
Well, that was pretty tough to lose, but I got up off the carpet,
dusted myself off and, magnanimous in defeat, said, ``I lost. Let's go
on to the next one.''
I say to my friend from Texas that I have faced intimidation
personally, and I have seen the coal miners and other workers of this
country face intimidation when the only weapon that they had was the
union--the only weapon they had with which to protect their rights. And
so I stand against the amendment.
I do not speak evil of those who support the amendment. We have
different viewpoints around here. But these are not ``greedy special
interests,'' not the people I represent. They are not greedy special
interests, the workers in West Virginia.
The Senator may wish to comment while I have the floor. I will be
glad to hear what he has to say.
Mr. GRAMM. If the Senator will yield, I am always educated when I
listen to the great former chairman of the Appropriations Committee,
and I think he has given us a great lecture this afternoon.
I appreciate him yielding because I have to go back for an
appointment, but I wanted to make a point. Everything that the Senator
has said today I agree with. There was a time in this country where
power was vested too greatly in the hands of business, and it created a
distortion in the marketplace. That needed to change, and we changed
it. Now, some people did escape it. I am looking at one of those
people, a great testament to the fact that America works. Robert C.
Byrd is a great testament to the fact that America is a great country
and a land of opportunity.
My point, Mr. President, is that you can go beyond the point of
having a fair balance. It is one thing to guarantee the rights of
people to strike, to be a member of a union and give them the ability
to go to the employer and say these are things we demand or we will
withhold our labor. But once you reach the point where you can say to
the employer, not only will we withhold our labor but we will have
Congress, or in this case the President using Executive power, prevent
you from hiring anybody else, that puts us in a similar position today
that we were in during the era of which the Senator speaks--only this
time it is those who provide the jobs having their rights denied.
I am concerned that we are going too far in strengthening the rights
of labor as compared to the rights of people who invest their money.
I am concerned that we are going to have a rash of strikes, and we
are going to initiate labor unrest. Since the short period after World
War II, where we had labor unrest for good reason--we had held wages
back; prices had risen in the war--we have had relative stability.
I am concerned that if we take away the rights of the employer to
hire a replacement worker or replacement workers when the union will
not come back to work, that we will go to the opposite extreme from
that the Senator spoke of. And I simply say that you can go too far in
the direction of management, as the law did in the 1930's, but I think
you can go too far in the direction of labor, as I believe this
Executive order does.
So, with profound respect for everything that the Senator is saying,
I think the President's Executive order was wrong.
Obviously this is a free society. This is the greatest deliberative
body in the world. And one of the reasons it is, is because the
distinguished Senator from West Virginia is a Member. But this is an
issue where I think the President is wrong and I believe that this is a
case of promoting the interests of one special interest--and it is a
special interest. Just as business is a special interest, so is labor.
I think the President is going too far. I think it hurts the country.
That is why I am in support of the amendment.
It is not to say that I would ever go back; and I hope, had I served
when the Senator served, that on many of those issues we might have
been on the same side. But today I do not think anybody can argue that
labor lacks rights. It is a question of what are the legitimate rights
of the people who invest their own money, who create jobs.
It is the balance of the two that I seek, and I believe this goes
beyond that delicate balance.
I appreciate the Senator yielding. I am not opposing the question,
and it is very generous of him, as he always is.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I respect the Senator's viewpoint. I respect
every Senator's viewpoint, here.
I, too, seek a balancing of the interests. And I think that is what
we are doing in opposing this amendment. As I understand the amendment,
it speaks of lawful--lawful strikes. I think the strikes we are talking
about are those that are lawful strikes. I think we are just going in
the opposite direction if we support this amendment.
This amendment prevents any funds appropriated in fiscal year 1995
from being used to ``implement, administer, or enforce any Executive
order, or other rule, regulation, or order, that limits, restricts, or
otherwise affects the ability of any existing or potential Federal
contractor, subcontractor, or vendor to hire permanent replacements for
lawfully striking workers.'' Obviously, if it is unlawful that puts a
different color on it, a different face on it. Mr. President, the
ultimate tool and the legal right of an American worker under
collective bargaining, the right to strike, should not become the right
to be fired. It should not become the right to be fired.
President Clinton signed an Executive order that allows the Secretary
of Labor to terminate for convenience any Federal contract with a firm
that permanently replaces lawfully striking workers. So I emphasize
again the word ``lawfully.'' President Clinton's order also allows the
Secretary of Labor to debar contractors that have permanently replaced
lawfully striking workers, thereby making the contractor ineligible to
receive Government contracts until the labor dispute that sparked the
strike is resolved. This order will affect some 28,000 companies that
receive 90 percent of Federal contract dollars. In signing this order,
the
[[Page S3726]] President has thrown his support, and the protection of
the Federal Government, behind the principle that American workers can
employ every facet of collective bargaining, including the right to
strike, in their efforts to resolve labor disputes. The amendment we
are considering today in my judgment would destroy that protection.
In recent years, the right to lawfully strike has more and more
become the reason to be fired, or to be displaced by permanent
replacement workers. Being replaced by temporary replacement workers is
one thing. But being replaced by permanent replacement workers is quite
another.
The ability of companies to easily hire permanent replacement workers
for employees lawfully engaged in a strike over proposed changes in the
terms of their employment undermines the incentive of companies to
negotiate the speedy resolution of labor-management conflicts. I note
that, in recent years, changes in the terms of employment are just as
likely to be decreases in compensation levels or health benefits to
workers, rather than increases. American workers are being asked to do
more and more for less and less, or with fewer and fewer workers, than
ever before. In a hearing conducted by the Senate Committee on Labor
and Human Resources in the last Congress, Mr. Jerry Jasinowski,
president of the National Association of Manufacturers, testified that
as a result of increased global competition, additional costs must
often be passed back to workers in the form of ``lower compensation or
lower employment.'' Strikes may often be the last resort for employee
groups that have been squeezed hard by this process.

Proponents of this amendment have suggested in the past that
legislation that would protect the return to work of American workers
engaged in a lawful strike would drive jobs out of America and dampen
economic growth. This is a scare tactic, plain and simple. American
jobs have already been moving out of the United States. They are
leaving our shores for a variety of reasons--lower production costs due
to cheaper labor, greater international use of child labor, lax
environmental and worker safety standards, Government subsidies, and
easy or even preferential access to the U.S. market from abroad. In
some overseas locations, workers have no collective bargaining rights--
none. Just like the situations that were prevalent back in the coal
fields when I was a boy, when miners could be intimidated or cowed into
accepting wages and working conditions which would be unthinkable
today. And those conditions are prevalent overseas in may countries.
These would be unthinkable today in these United States. Just as those
conditions back in the hollows and hills of West Virginia today would
be unthinkable. They were unthinkable then, but who was there to
champion the rights of the hard-working people who had to go down into
the bowels of the Earth and labor with their hands and in the sweat of
their face earn a crust of bread for their children?
All of these factors reduce costs for companies moving off of U.S.
shores, and increase their profits. But what is good for profits is not
always good for the human beings who do the work.
Millions of men and women in this country have only the capital of
their bare hands, a strong back, a strong neck. They will not go back
to the days when that strong back felt the lash of intimidation and the
threat: ``Clean up your place before you leave. There is someone else
waiting for your job.''

I do not believe that the United States should lower its safety and
environmental standards, or promulgate Third-World working conditions,
in order to compete on this kind of a playing field. Historically,
unions and collective bargaining have served to contain the abuses of
owners and management. Unions and collective bargaining have also
worked historically to improve conditions for large numbers of working
people previously employed in the sweatshops, in the shipyards.
Try riveting. Try welding. Try the job of being a shipfitter in the
shipyards in Baltimore when the cold winds whip across the bay and
freeze the vapor of your breath when it hits your eyelashes. I can hear
those rivets in my dreams. I know what it is to be a worker, to have to
work with my hands. There is nothing dishonorable about it. The Bible
says, ``The laborer is worthy of his hire.''
Throughout the years, unions have helped to ensure fair and equitable
treatment for employees, and these standards have carried through to
nonunion workers as well. They have benefited likewise. Now, unions
must strive to protect the jobs, the health benefits, the retirement
packages, and compensation levels of employees from excessive
devaluation in the name of competitiveness, downsizing, or
restructuring.
While I agree that the United States must work to compete more
effectively in global markets, and that restructuring the economic
relations among the United States and her trading partners may be
essential to improving and expanding trade, I do not believe that we
should enter into any agreement, or support any action, that does not
benefit both the American industries and American workers.
I voted against the North American Free-Trade Agreement. I voted
against the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
in part because these agreements will likely lead, in this Senator's
judgment, to the displacement of many American workers--workers
unlikely to have the skills required to easily secure other employment.
Such displaced workers only add to burdens we already face in terms of
meeting the challenges of an increasingly competitive international
economy, and also mean a continued decline in the basic standard of
living for millions of Americans and their children.
Undermining whatever support exists for striking workers to return to
their jobs upon the successful conclusion of negotiations further
encourages companies to hire permanent replacement workers at the
lowest wage that the market will bear. Strikes, it is important to
note, are the absolute last resort of working men and women in some
situations. A strike is not a desirable consequence for labor or
management. Striking workers are faced with a considerable loss of
income for an undetermined period of time.
I know. I once was a small businessman; a small, small businessman;
very small; very small. I had a little grocery store in Sophia, WV.
There was a big coal mining strike in West Virginia in the beginning of
the 1950's. The strike lasted several months. Some of the coal miners
could not get food for their children. They could not get credit at the
company store. So they came to Robert Byrd's little jot'em down store.
They came to the little jot'em down store, the Robert C. Byrd grocery
store in Sophia. I let them have food on credit. They were on strike.
It was a long strike. But I let them have whatever I had in the
shelves. I did not have a lot. But it saw some of them through--the
coal miners in Raleigh County.
In 1952, I ran for the U.S. House of Representatives. I attended a
Democratic rally one night. And the president of the United Mine
Workers District, headquartered in Charleston, the State capital, was
speaking at the rally.
There were three candidates for Governor. And, of course, that meant
three factions. And I did not want to align myself with any faction. I
wanted to be liked by everybody. I wanted everybody to be for me. I
wanted the votes of all.
UMWA District President Bill Blizzard, one of those fire-eating,
union leaders in the old days, was speaking when I arrived at the rally
a bit late. He pointed his finger at me and said, ``Whether they are a
candidate for constable or for Congress''--he pointed his finger right
at me. I was a candidate for Congress--``if they do not vote for our
candidate for Governor, don't you coal miners vote for them.''
I was not welcome at the rally. The master of ceremonies happened to
be a young attorney who, after Mr. Blizzard had finished speaking,
said, ``Now we will have the benediction, and after the benediction go
over into the other room of the schoolhouse and get yourself some ice
cream and cakes and refreshments.''
About that time, an old, grizzled coal miner stood up in the back of
the room, and said, ``We want to hear Byrd.'' And this enterprising
young lawyer said, ``You can hear Byrd some other time. We are going to
have the
[[Page S3727]] benediction.'' Well, nobody is going to argue with that.
Let the preacher give the benediction.
But then I said to a couple of my friends who were there with me that
night, ``Go out to the car and get my fiddle.'' I started playing a few
tunes and the whole crowd came back in with their ice cream and cake
and sat down. They filled the room.
I said, ``When you were on strike, you coal miners, when you coal
miners were on strike, who fed your children? Did Bill Blizzard, the
United Mine Worker President, feed your children? How many groceries
did he provide when you were in need? I fed your children. Are you
going to vote against the man who helped the coal miners when they were
on strike?'' They answered with a loud ``No!'' The miners gave me a big
vote in that election, and Bill Blizzard became my supporter and
friend.
So I have been a worker in the field myself. I know what it is to
have my brother-in-law's father killed in a slate fall in the coal
mines. I know what it is to have the brother-in-law die from
pneumoconiosis--black lung.
Workers do sometimes strike for better working conditions, for safer
working conditions.
They do not strike ``because they don't want to work.''
A strike often pits brother against brother, neighbor against
neighbor, and can tear entire communities apart. However, gutting this
action of last resort by allowing companies to hire permanent
replacement workers, as this amendment does, removes the incentive for
companies to seriously negotiate with their work force.
Research has shown that strikes involving permanent replacement
workers last an average of seven times longer than strikes that do not
involve permanent replacement workers. Strikes involving permanent
replacements also tend to be more contentious, and can disrupt whole
communities for long periods. In my own State of West Virginia, a labor
dispute at Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation was unresolved from November
1990, until June 1992. This dispute resulted in the hiring of 1,000 new
workers as permanent employees by the company. The striking workers
were told that if and when the dispute was resolved, they would not get
their jobs back. Eventually, contract negotiations resumed and an
agreement was finally reached that returned union workers to their
jobs. If it had not been possible to promise these replacement workers
permanent jobs, efforts to find the replacements might have been
hindered, giving the company greater incentive to negotiate with the
union and likely resolving this labor conflict much sooner.
Proponents have argued that the status quo should remain the status
quo--that no effort should be made to shore up the eroding ability of
workers to strike for fair and equitable compensation, health benefits,
and retirement packages. This argument simply does not recognize the
changing economic and employment conditions brought about by changes in
the world economy and by the adoption of recent trade agreements that
have eroded the income power and options of American workers.
We must not take actions that would denigrate the inherent dignity of
work or the noble role of the American worker in the life of this
Nation. All of us enjoy the fruits of their labor. The sweat of their
collective brows, the calloused hands, the bent backs, the wrinkled
faces, and their broken health deserve our gratitude and our utmost
respect. Where would any of us be without their toil?

Out on the roads they have gathered, a hundred-thousand men,
To ask for a hold on life as sure as the wolf's hold in his
den.
Their need lies close to the quick of life as rain to the
furrow sown:
It is as meat to the slender rib, as marrow to the bone.
They ask but the leave to labor, for a taste of life's
delight,
For a little salt to savor their bread, for houses water-
tight.

They ask but the right to labor, and to live by the strength
of their hands--
They who have bodies like knotted oaks, and patience like
sea-sands.
And the right of a man to labor and his right to labor in
joy--
Not all your laws can strangle that right, nor the gates of
Hell destroy.
For it came with the making of man and was kneaded into his
bones,
And it will stand at the last of things on the dust of
crumbled thrones.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. D'AMATO addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I might
yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Idaho and then have the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is
so ordered.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from New York for
yielding. I will not use the 5 minutes, but I did want to make a few
comments in relation to the Kassebaum amendment and what I believe to
be its importance in this issue that we are debating here on the floor.

Mr. President, I will also add to my statement a letter from NFIB
[National Federation of Independent Business], for in that letter are
several quotes that I think are extremely valuable to this debate. One
of those quotes which is important, and I will mention it at this
moment, as it relates to what our President has just done and the
meaning of that act as it relates to a balance that we have held in
labor law now for a good long while. It says:

This balance of labor's right to strike with management's
right to stay in business using temporary or permanent
replacement workers during economic strikes has not been
challenged by any President since 1935.

Are the working conditions and are the labor conditions of America
today so different, have they changed so dramatically since we placed
quality labor laws on the books of our country since 1935 that our
President would act as he has acted? I simply do not believe that is
true.
What our President has said by this act is, ``Give in or go out of
business.'' No President has said it that way, nor should they. It is
unilateral disarmament of employers at the bargaining table. And that
has never been public policy and it should never be public policy.
What was then was then; what is now is now. The world has changed
significantly. And it is important that the laws that still work be
allowed to work.
Certainly, the action that was taken by this President is to disallow
fundamental labor law in this country and the unique balance that has
been created and held for so many years.
The amendment to prohibit funds from being used to implement any
Executive order that bars hiring Federal contractors who hire permanent
worker replacements is an amendment that should be passed by this
Congress, and I support it strongly.
If there had been a pressing need for such an order, why did this
President not issue it more than 2 years ago? What has changed over the
course of this President's administration that would cause for this
destabilizing act to occur when no President has taken this stand for
35 years? Nothing has happened. That is the answer. So why would he do
it?
If the President actually had a clear legal authority to issue such
an Executive order, why did he not do it earlier?
Well, he does not have, in our opinion, that legal authority.
Why, instead, did he put all of his eggs in one basket of striker
replacement legislation during the last Congress?
One has to wonder if the answer does not lie more in politics than in
policy.
I concur with the Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton] that the
President has exceeded his constitutional and legal authority.
The Executive order flies in the face of 57 years of settled
employment law as written by Congress, as consistently applied by the
courts, and as consistently enforced by 10 Presidents and their
administrations.
No President has ever launched such a full frontal attack on settled
Federal laws governing employer-employee relations; on fair and
flexible bargaining in the work place; on the rights of employers and
employees to determine their own negotiating behavior on a level
playing field; and on the Federal Government's role as impartial
referee, rather than coach and cheerleader for one side.
This Executive order will be costly to taxpayers, as strikes are
encouraged and prolonged against contractors
[[Page S3728]] working on Federal jobs; and to the general public and
the economy, as the ripple effect of these strikes cause bottlenecks
elsewhere in the economy, affecting suppliers, subcontractors,
carriers, and others.
Like so many other clever schemes that erupt within the Capital
Beltway, this one will not help workers, it will hurt them; will not
create jobs, it will destroy them; was designed to court a few elite
lobbyists, not rank and file workers and their families; will shut the
door to Federal contracting on many small businesses who will find this
condition economically impossible to meet.
I ask unanimous consent that the letter from the NFIB be printed in
the Record.
There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:

National Federation of

Independent Business

Washington, DC, March 9, 1995.
Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Kassebaum: On behalf of the more than 600,000
members of National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB)
I urge your colleagues to support your amendment to H.R. 889,
the Defense Supplemental Appropriations bill. The amendment
would effectively void the President's Executive Order
barring federal contractors from the use of permanent
replacement workers.
Such an Executive Order could increase the taxpayers' cost
of federal contracts and would destroy the equality of
economic bargaining power between labor and management which
has been preserved for 55 years. This balance of labor's
right to strike with management's right to stay in business
using temporary or permanent replacement workers during
economic strikes has not been challenged by any President
since 1935.
In a recent poll, 81% of NFIB members oppose striker
replacement legislation. Small business owners view any
change in the delicate balance between labor and business as
a threat to the livelihood of their business. They believe
upsetting this balance will result in the following:
Increased work disruptions affecting both union and non-
union businesses;
A confrontational workplace setting, which will lead to
more strikes, diminished competitiveness, and lost
productivity;
Increased strike activity in large companies, which
adversely affects small businesses that are located near or
contract with the struck company;
The creation of an unfair union organizing tool; and
An unbalancing of over 55 years of labor law.
Small business owners urge your colleagues to support your
amendment to H.R. 889. Your vote on passage of the Kassebaum
amendment will be considered a Key Small Business Vote for
the 104th Congress.
Sincerely,

John J. Motley III,

Vice President,
Federal Governmental Relations.

Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, the announcement of an Executive order
banning the use of replacement workers by Federal contractors disturbs
me because it appears to circumvent congressional authority to amend
this Nation's labor laws. Because of this concern, I support the effort
to prevent the implementation and enforcement of this order.
Nevertheless, I remain a supporter of legislative attempts that would
amend the National Labor Relations Act and overturn Supreme Court
decisions which have weakened what I believe to be the original intent
of the law--to explicitly protect a worker's economic self-help
activities through the right to strike.
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, all of us here, on both sides of this
issue, agree that the right to strike is essential to preserving the
balance of power between labor and management in this country. But that
right is hollow if, by exercising it, a worker faces the loss of his or
her job.
President Clinton has taken the important step of clarifying that in
this country, as in the rest of the industrial democracies with less
than a handful of exceptions, workers cannot be fired for exercising
their legal rights.
Unfortunately, our attempts to clarify that right through
legislation, led for years by Senator Metzenbaum, were blocked by
filibusters, despite clear majorities that favored a ban on striker
replacements.
President Clinton's Executive order is needed because Congress has
been frustrated in its attempts to clear up the current untenable
situation.
His action follows established precedent, such as actions by
President Bush, who, in 1992, issued an Executive order to require
unionized contractors to post notices in their workplaces informing all
employees that they could not be required to join a union.
President Bush also used executive authority to ban unions from using
for political purposes fees collected that had been collected from
union members who disagreed with union policy positions.
As a Republican Congressman said at the time, this was an ``effort by
the President to do something through Executive order that he cannot
get Congress to do.''
So let's not be distracted by procedural arguments. President Clinton
was well within his authority and established precedent when he issued
his Executive order. Let's stick to the substance of this issue, an
issue that goes to the fundamental rights of workers, and to the very
foundations of labor-management relations in this country.
Mr. President, before the New Deal, striking workers had no legal
protection against being fired. To provide legal protection for the
right to strike, Congress passed and President Roosevelt signed the
National Labor Relations Act in 1935. Without it, hostile,
confrontational, and often violent labor-management relations would
have persisted.
But in 1938, a Supreme Court ruling that confirmed the right to
strike offered an unsolicited comment that established a legal basis
for hiring
permanent replacements for striking workers.

This language has remained a logical and legal anomaly ever since. In
law schools across the country, law professors have struggled in vain
to distinguish between firing and permanently replacing striking
workers.
For many years, this problem was, in fact, academic; it had little
application in the real world.
But for the last decade and more, the issue has become all too real
for thousands of workers who have lost their jobs by exercising what
the vast majority of Americans believe should be their right under the
law.
The permanent replacement of striking workers has become an all too
common tactic in labor-management disputes. In a survey last year, 25
percent of employers said that they would hire or consider hiring
permanent replacements, in response to a strike. A recent GAO report
found that employers hire or threaten to hire permanent replacements in
one of every three strikes.
Today, the threat of permanent replacement calls into question the
fundamental right to strike, upsets the balance of power between
workers and management, and introduces an unnecessary source of
friction and hostility into labor relations.
We have evidence that strikes in which permanent replacement workers
are hired are longer, and more heated, than those in which that tactic
is not used.
Mr. President, I know that there is much emotion on both sides of
this issue, and I would like my colleagues who disagree with me to
understand that I do not take their concerns lightly. Let me address a
few of those concerns now.
We have heard in recent debate that President Clinton's Executive
order will upset the balance of power between labor and management and
make strikes more likely as a result. This argument is not only
inaccurate, Mr. President, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of
the costs of a strike to workers and their families.
First, it is the increasing use of striker replacements that has
upset the traditional balance of power between workers and employers.
The President has acted to remove this source of much of the hostility
and divisiveness that now attends labor-management relations.
Second, Mr. President, under no circumstance is a strike an easy
option for workers who will suffer the loss of wages, health benefits,
savings, and even major assets such as cars and homes to undertake a
strike with no knowledge of what the outcome will be.
We have also heard, Mr. President, that without the threat of hiring
permanent replacements, employers will be powerless in the face of
union demands. The fact of the matter is that employers did quite well
for over four decades, by stockpiling inventories,
[[Page S3729]] hiring temporary replacements, transferring work, and by
other tactics, without recourse to permanent replacement workers.
As we seek new ways to encourage labor-management cooperation, to
recognize the shared goals of American workers and employers in a
changing global economy, a first step ought to be to eliminate the
unnecessary, inflammatory practice of permanently replacing strikers.
Mr. President, simple fairness demands it. And simple fairness
demands that we defeat this attempt to cut out the funding for
President Clinton's Executive order. I urge my colleagues to vote with
me to put this relic of another era of labor-management relations
behind us.
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I strongly oppose this amendment by the
Senator from Kansas. Her amendment, if adopted, would prevent the
expenditure of funds by the Labor Department to carry out the Executive
order President Clinton signed yesterday.
The Executive order is entitled ``Ensuring the Economical and
Efficient Administration and Completion of Federal Government
Contracts.'' Simply put, this order would prevent Federal agencies from
contracting with companies that permanently replace striking workers.
Current law protects workers who strike for unfair labor practices,
but allows those who strike for economic reasons to be permanently
replaced--a curious synonym for being fired.
Congress has attempted to legislatively rectify this inequity. Time
after time, however, a minority of our colleagues has frustrated the
will of the majority, often even preventing the Senate from debating
the matter. In the last 3 years, the Senate has been forced to vote to
invoke cloture on the bill four different times. Each time, despite
garnering a majority necessary to pass the bill, a minority has ruled
the day and frustrated the will of that majority: June 11, 1992,
cloture failed 41 to 55; June 16, 1992, cloture failed 42 to 57; July
12, 1994, cloture failed 47 to 53; and July 13, 1994, cloture failed 46
to 53. Now, Mr. President, the opponents complain that the President is
thwarting the will of Congress.
Whenever striker replacement legislation has come before us in the
past, I have heard from Rhode Islanders with views on both sides of the
issue. Many business people have told me of their fear of a tilt in the
balance of power in labor-management relations. They have discussed
their concern with being faced with one of two choices: agree to union
economic demands or be forced out of business. One gentleman even
remarked that he considered employee demands for increased wages to be
blackmail.
I view striker replacement legislation and this Executive order
differently. The legislation would restore a proper balance of power
between employees and employers. Employees would have the right to
strike for increased wages and management would have the right to hire
replacement workers on a temporary basis. This Executive order tells
businesses that if they want to do business with the Federal
Government, they must respect the legal rights of working men and women
or look elsewhere for business.
I look forward to a full debate on this matter and urge my colleagues
to reject this amendment.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise today in strong opposition to
Senator Kassebaum's amendment that effectively vetoes President
Clinton's Executive order that prevents striker replacement from being
used by Federal contractors.
I am a blue collar Senator. I support the right to strike. I can't
support Solidarity's right to strike in the shipyards of Gdansk and not
support the rights of American unions to strike here at home.
The President's Executive order protects the right of Americans to
strike by prohibiting Government contractors who make their profit off
the Federal funds from permanently replacing striking employees. The
Executive order will also force these managers to deal with the issues
raised in the strike, not just replace workers who protest as a last
resort. It will restore basic fairness to the bargaining process.
Strikers can mean economic ruin for both the workers and the company
they rely on for work. There must also be equal pressure on both the
workers and the company to compromise if a strike does occur.
I believe that allowing management the threat of replacing workers
gives them an unfair advantage at the bargaining table. If strikers can
be permanently replaced, there is considerable less pressure on
businesses to address the underlying problem and settle with their
workers. However, if businesses can hire only temporary replacements
and workers have to face the social economic disruption of a strike,
the pressure remains on both sides to work out their differences.
It's a matter of basic fairness to American workers. It ensures
fairness in resolving labor disputes. My roots are in blue collar
neighborhoods--this goes to my basic values.
That is why I strongly oppose Senator Kassebaum's amendment. This
amendment vetoes my values. I urge my colleagues to join me opposing
this amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I know this is a very contentious issue,
and I do not question anybody's motivations on either side.
I have a deep-rooted feeling and philosophy--and I have voted on this
many times--that people have a fundamental right to withhold their
labor--that is, to strike--if they feel it is the only way they can
make their point. I do not know what other alternatives labor has in
certain cases when the process breaks down.
I support the right to strike. It is fundamental. I believe that all
of my colleagues feel that way. Therefore, if one says that it is an
inherent, innate right for the citizens of our country, then I have to
ask the question: is it a myth, that, on the one hand we say you have
the right to strike, but, on the other hand we say if you exercise that
right, you will lose your job permanently? That appears to me to be an
inconsistency.
I can understand if we were to set up conditions. I can understand if
we said that there would be a period of time in certain industries, and
if there was a certain strike in an industry that in terms of the
health and welfare of the people that this simply could not be
tolerated. I understand there are laws in various States--in my State--
that say if you are a municipal employee and strike, you can lose your
job, benefits and procedures. But that is not what we are talking
about. What we are talking about is taking people and just saying, ``If
you strike, we will replace you permanently.'' I believe that flies in
the face of what we are about as a nation.
Therefore, Mr. President, I am going to, with great reluctance, make
a motion to table the amendment that is before the Senate and ask for
the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gorton). Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. CRAIG. 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. D'AMATO. 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. D'AMATO. Mr. President, had I asked for the yeas and nays?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The yeas and nays have been ordered.
The question is on agreeing to the motion to lay on the table
amendment No. 331.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Wyoming [Mr. Simpson] is
necessarily absent.
I further announce that, if present and voting, the Senator from
Wyoming [Mr. Simpson] would vote ``nay.''
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 42, nays 57, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 102 Leg.]

YEAS--42

Akaka
Baucus
Biden
Bingaman
Boxer
Bradley
[[Page S3730]] Breaux
Bryan
Byrd
Conrad
D'Amato
Daschle
Dodd
Dorgan
Feingold
Feinstein
Ford
Glenn
Graham
Harkin
Heflin
Inouye
Johnston
Kennedy
Kerrey
Kerry
Kohl
Lautenberg
Leahy
Levin
Lieberman
Mikulski
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Murray
Pell
Reid
Robb
Rockefeller
Sarbanes
Simon
Wellstone

NAYS--57

Abraham
Ashcroft
Bennett
Bond
Brown
Bumpers
Burns
Campbell
Chafee
Coats
Cochran
Cohen
Coverdell
Craig
DeWine
Dole
Domenici
Exon
Faircloth
Frist
Gorton
Gramm
Grams
Grassley
Gregg
Hatch
Hatfield
Helms
Hollings
Hutchison
Inhofe
Jeffords
Kassebaum
Kempthorne
Kyl
Lott
Lugar
Mack
McCain
McConnell
Murkowski
Nickles
Nunn
Packwood
Pressler
Pryor
Roth
Santorum
Shelby
Smith
Snowe
Specter
Stevens
Thomas
Thompson
Thurmond
Warner

NOT VOTING--1

Simpson

So the motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 331) was
rejected.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DOLE. 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. DOLE. Mr. President, the question is on what?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on the amendment of the
Senator from Kansas.
Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, as I have stated earlier, many of us want
to get about the business of the appropriations bill. But it has been
the decision of the Senator from Kansas to offer an amendment that
affects the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of workers in this
country.
As I stated earlier in the day, it is amazing to me that this
institution has debated mainly two issues. One has been unfunded
mandates, and the second is the balanced budget amendment. And now the
first issue that comes before us affecting working people is to limit
their rights and liberties in the workplace. If this amendment were to
be passed tonight, millions of workers would be affected by it. Their
working conditions would not be enhanced. Their wages would not be
increased.
The well being of the children of those workers will not be enhanced.
Their parents will not have a greater assurance of where we are going
and where the Contract With America is going.
So it is an extraordinary fact that the first measure before us
affecting working families is to diminish their rights and interests.
I am quite prepared to go forward, as we did earlier, with debate
about the Executive order and its importance to working families. We
have no interest in prolonging consideration of the underlying bill.
But we do believe that this is a matter of considerable importance, and
there are Senators who want to be heard.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. STEVENS. 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. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed
to speak on a matter separate and apart from the existing bill for a
period of about 7 or 8 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The
Senator is recognized.

____________________