[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 45 (Friday, March 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3819-S3821]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          STRIKER REPLACEMENT

  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, next week I will be introducing a bill with 
regard to striker replacement. This is the same bill that I have 
introduced previously in this body.
  I discussed this possible compromise that would maybe put an end, 
hopefully, to the ongoing battle we have had now for many years in the 
U.S. Senate. I discussed this with the chairman of the committee of 
jurisdiction, Senator Kassebaum, earlier today. I understand we will be 
having a cloture vote on this matter on Monday.
  I would simply say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and on 
both sides of this issue that I think it is not good form, it is not 
good business, and it upsets the routine schedule of the Senate when 
matters of this nature, however important they are, and however timely 
they might be, should never, ever have been placed on the supplemental 
appropriations bill with regard to national defense that is before the 
body.
  For the life of me, I do not understand why the managers of the bill 
or those in opposition did not simply make a point of order that it was 
legislation on an appropriations bill, which it clearly is. Had that 
point of order been made, I would hope that the matter would have 
fallen.
  Let me say, Mr. President, that I have voted for and will continue to 
vote for some type of a striker replacement bill. What we have, of 
course, is the traditional battle: The old bulls of business on one 
side of the pasture, and the old bulls of organized labor on the other, 
glaring and pawing at the turf and snarling at each other across the 
pasture.
  All too often we do not take into consideration, I think, what is in 
the interest of the United States of America as we go into the 
international arena, the international pasture today, and certainly 
into the new century that is almost here. We see the quarrelsome 
gestures and the rhetoric about how fair or unfair this is to different 
groups of Americans, depending how they are postured on this particular 
matter.
  Senator Domenici was on the floor earlier this week, and I spoke 
after he spoke with regard to the fall of the dollar and what caused 
that and how serious it is. I agreed with all of that.
  I simply state once again that I think the matter of the fair 
treatment of laboring people who are organized in the United States of 
America is something that we should continue to address and not just 
simply continue with actions on the floor of the U.S. Senate that I 
believe, for all meaningful purposes, are designed to end the rights of 
organized labor and the rights of collective bargaining.
  Some will say that is an overly harsh statement, but I think that is 
the reality of the situation. And I suppose that businesses today feel 
that with the advent of the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate and 
the House of Representatives that they could sit back, take a sigh of 
relief and say it shall not pass with the revolution that took place 
last November.
  That might well be. They may have their facts straight. Is not what I 
think should be a different and reasoned approach. Likewise, the 
organized labor should realize and recognize that the United States of 
America is now very much tied up, more so than they have ever been 
before, with the economies of the whole world. The new century that is 
about to come upon us, I suggest should best be recognized that we 
should be looking over the horizon, if we will, aside from the facts 
that we always have on measures of this nature.
  The economy of the United States of America is tied more tightly to 
the international community--the whole globe--than it ever has been 
before. Many people, including this Senator, had thought that would 
probably be good for the United States of America. Maybe in the end it 
still might be.
  Suffice it to say that when we are tied to the international 
community with trade agreements, trade treaties, NAFTAs, and GATT's, 
and all of these things, it is a small wonder that the dollar is not 
reacting well.
  It is no small wonder, Mr. President, that there is nervousness in 
the international economic and fiscal community today, with the 
problems of the border with our neighbor to the south, just across the 
border in Mexico, and certainly the Mexico bailout proposition--call it 
what you will. Whether it is necessary or whether it is not, whether it 
is good or whether it is bad simply proves the point that I am making, 
that the United States of America is tied into the economic structure 
of the world more so than it ever has been before.
  When we are doing these kinds of things, we should not be, therefore, 
particularly surprised when we see different things happening in 
different parts of the world and investors in different countries of 
the world moving 
[[Page S3820]] money about, the super moneychangers of the world today 
for safety reasons and to get the best return on their investment.
  So I think we are going to be involved in a rather uncertain period 
and it might all work out well.
  That is why I think it was not wise for the President of the United 
States to take the action that he took by Executive order the other day 
with regard to penalizing certain companies or corporations that do 
business with the Federal Government with regard to replacement of 
workers. I thought that was an untimely move by the President. I am not 
a lawyer, but I suspect, in the end, the courts might decide he did not 
have that authority.
  But whether the President did or did not certainly has brought up the 
firestorm that has taken over the Senate for the last few hours. The 
President did not consult with me before he took that action, nor is he 
required to do so, except to say I think we have enough to quarrel and 
worry about on the floor of the U.S. Senate today without getting a 
labor matter involved in a supplemental appropriations bill. It should 
never have come up on this measure. I wish that I had an opportunity to 
make a point of order against this, and probably that, hopefully, would 
resolve it. In any event, it has brought the matter of striker 
replacement up to this Senator once again, and I hope that is not going 
to be dealt with on an appropriations bill, especially the one before 
us now which needs to be moved.
  Therefore, in the effort and sounding for compromise, once again, I 
am going to briefly talk about a bill that I will be introducing next 
week that I have introduced before, which I think if big management and 
big labor would take a look at and if both sides--both quarreling 
sides--in the U.S. Senate would take a look at it, they would see that 
the compromise offered by the Senator from Nebraska, if enacted, might 
put to rest this contentious matter that keeps bubbling to the surface 
of the floor of the Senate and the floor of the House with regard to 
striker replacements.
  I would like to say, Mr. President, that it is very clear to me after 
looking at the situation in my great State of Nebraska today, we have 
an extremely low unemployment rate, one of the lowest in the Nation. I 
think the last unemployment rate in Nebraska was 2.3 percent. That does 
not mean that the people of Nebraska are being overpaid.
  The facts of the matter are, we have a great number of college 
graduates today who are not able to find work in their desired type of 
employment, not able to find work that complements the degrees and 
studies that they receive from our various high-quality institutions of 
higher learning. That is another way to say that I think probably the 
main problem in Nebraska today, with our economy that otherwise is 
reasonably healthy, is that we have a great number of underemployed 
people in the State of Nebraska, many of them doing things that they 
are not trained for or ever sought to do in their early lives and 
during their educational experience.
  Part of this has to do with the fact that there is great instability 
today of employment. The record is replete with big businesses, for 
whatever reason and probably some of them are justified, laying people 
off when they get to be 50 or 55 years of age, just about the time that 
they were set for life.
  And at 50 and 55 years of age, they are not particularly attractive 
to many businesses for the jobs that at least pay something akin to the 
salary that they have been used to in their adult lives up to this 
period of time.
  So I happen to feel that if we are going to be competitive in the 
world internationally in the next century, we had best set about some 
procedures that can solve the problems that we have in America today, 
the problems that labor sees, the problems that management sees and try 
to get these two sides together.
  The bill that I am introducing is a compromise that I have alluded 
to. It is not a complicated piece of legislation at all. It simply says 
that under the Federal law, if it were adopted--and it would have to be 
a compromise; and this compromise is not accepted by big labor, they do 
not like it; it certainly is not accepted by big business, they do not 
like it--but it simply says as a compromise in trying to put an end to 
this, that for the first 60 days of a strike in an organized plant, the 
management of that company would not be allowed to hire permanent 
replacements. They could hire temporary people, but for the first 60 
days of any legal strike that was called by an organized client under 
our collective bargaining laws today, management could not rush in and 
send the clear signal that if the people who had the right to strike do 
not show up, their job is going to be taken on a permanent basis by the 
first person that walks in the door or makes an application.
  For the life of me, I have never been able to understand those who 
say they believe in collective bargaining and then turn right around 
and say, ``but if the unionized plant goes on strike, management has 
the option at their discretion to say, `OK, we'll hire somebody else to 
take your place.'''
  Any reasonable person that believes in collective bargaining would 
have to agree that if organized labor does not have the right to 
strike, and organized labor does not use that promiscuously, but if 
they do not have the ultimate right to strike, the collective 
bargaining that they go through from time to time is heavily stacked 
against them because all of the chips for bargaining are on 
management's side of the table.
  Now, on the other hand, let me take the devil's advocate position, if 
I might, for a moment with regard to unions and union membership and 
union leadership. I also feel that union labor and union leaders must 
also recognize that we are in a new era. I do not believe that we 
should simply pass legislation that permanently prevents management 
from ever hiring a replacement worker under any circumstances.
  If you accept that point of view fully that organized labor pushes, 
which I do not agree with, that will simply mean that if organized 
labor never will agree to a contract, somewhat along the lines we are 
seeing in the baseball impasse today, then organized labor would be 
able to close down and eliminate a factory forever.
 I do not think they should have that power either.

  Mr. President, the compromise that I am offering, that I emphasize is 
detested by management and it is detested by the leadership of 
organized labor, would simply reach a compromise by saying for the 
first 60 days of an organized strike management would be prevented from 
hiring permanent replacement workers. Again, I emphasize they could 
hire temporary workers but not permanent replacement workers. The first 
60 days they could not do that. At the end of 60 days, the compromise 
would kick in, and for the first 30-days after 60 days management would 
be allowed to hire 10 percent of their work force as permanent 
replacements.
  It goes up from there to 20 percent in 90 days, 30 percent in 120 
days, and it goes on up to the end of 1 year, 360 days. If no 
settlement has been reached, then in that event and that event only 
would management be permitted to have total replacement of all the 
workers that went on strike.
  Putting it another way, this is simply a phased program to try to 
satisfy what supposedly is the beliefs of both big labor and big 
management without taking a look at what is good for the overall 
economy of the United States of America and the competition that I 
suggest we are likely to have from around the globe with the turn of 
the century, as exhibited by the difficulties that we are having right 
now with regard to fiscal and monetary policy and the fall of the 
dollar and all the problems that could and probably will cause in the 
United States by further increasing interest rates. And some have 
alluded to the fact that, indeed, that could push us into a recession 
that no one had previously contemplated.
  So I am saying, Mr. President, the votes I will be casting on this 
whole matter of striker replacement are in an effort to get myself into 
a position to hopefully bring along the Senate to stop shouting at each 
other, to quit listening to the dictates of big labor only and big 
management only and do what I think is right for America. And I have to 
think the Exon proposal should satisfy well meaning and well-
intentioned individuals on both sides of this very contentious problem 
and maybe get on to lay this matter to rest and have 
[[Page S3821]] labor peace and management peace in the years 
immediately ahead when I think the United States of America is very 
likely to set its course as to whether or not we are going to be as 
successful in the new century as we were in the last.
  Mr. President, I am simply appealing for reason. I am only making 
these comments so I can explain to my colleagues the position that this 
Senator has on this matter, and I will be introducing the bill that I 
have briefly described next week so that all can look at it. I was very 
pleased to hear Senator Kassebaum, the chairman of the committee of 
jurisdiction, since she did not know about this piece of legislation. I 
do not think anybody else does either, because nobody will pay any 
attention to a compromise, although I have introduced this piece of 
legislation before and talked to some Senators about it--maybe, just 
maybe, Mr. President, something like this might be the bounds to stop 
the inflammatory rhetoric that is going on now, that is holding up the 
passage of the defense supplemental, which needs to be enacted into 
law. And we all agree on that. Yet we get off on what I think are these 
nonsensical maneuvers and rules to force some people's will on what 
should be done at a very inappropriate time.
  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

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