[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 101 (Wednesday, July 10, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7508-S7511]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                TEAM ACT

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, this debate about the so-called TEAM Act 
has, unfortunately, produced more heat than light. I first began to 
focus on the issue several months ago when I visited a small high-
technology firm in my State, Lasertechnics, in Albuquerque, NM. 
Lasertechnics is a very good employer and has on staff about 60 people.
  The issues related to unions organizing are far from the minds of 
anyone in that firm, as far as I can tell. The company has about two 
dozen different teams discussing many task-oriented items. But some of 
those teams have the potential of running into subjects considered 
``terms and conditions of employment,'' as that phrase is used in the 
National Labor Relations Act.
  Flex time to help bolster Asia-Pacific sales is one example that 
stands out in my mind. If the owner of that company, Gene Borque, just 
decides one day to issue flex time schedules or a policy governing flex 
time, then clearly there is no violation of the law since there is no 
union in that company. If he has a team decide on a policy, and the 
team enters into back-and-forth discussions with him on that subject, 
then according to the NLRB, there probably is a violation of the law as 
it now stands.
  This circumstance should be the focus of our discussion if we are 
ever able to get into a meaningful discussion about these issues in the 
future, because, in my view, Gene Borque, the owner of this company, 
should not be in danger of violating the law by operating as he does 
today.
  The issues being debated are very real. First of all, how can we 
assure employers the right to organize their companies to get the best 
effort and

[[Page S7509]]

sense of ownership from their workers? And at the same time, how can we 
assure employees that they retain an ability to organize into unions 
and to bargain on terms and conditions of employment free from the 
threat of sham unions being established or manipulated by employers? 
These are both legitimate goals. Several weeks ago it was my hope and 
my belief that we could develop language to offer as a substitute for 
S. 295 that would satisfy both of these objectives.
  I had hopes of offering an amendment that would substantially improve 
the TEAM Act so that, first, there would be no ambiguity that workplace 
teams and nonunion workplaces were permitted under the law, and, 
second, that we would specify that teams that discuss terms and 
conditions of employment would have to comply with certain other 
requirements to assure that company dominated or sham unions could not 
be established and that workers would have a determinative role in any 
discussions on those terms and conditions of employment.
  Mr. President, after several weeks of trying to find this common 
ground to propose a substitute for the bill that we are considering, I 
have concluded that it is not possible at this time. The organization 
of employers that has been formed to support the TEAM Act has 
determined to resist amendments and to drive toward passage of S. 295 
even though this legislation faces a sure veto by the President. The 
labor unions, on the other hand, have organized to oppose the TEAM Act. 
Relying on the President's promised veto, they have determined that the 
TEAM Act or any substitute for it which amends section 8(a)(2) of the 
NLRA should be opposed.
  In my view, the concerns that the unions have about the TEAM Act that 
is before us are well founded. I do not want to get into a technical 
discussion about the legislation, but many people, including the 
Chairman of the NLRB, Howard Gould, as well as the Dunlop Commission 
and others have argued that an adjustment is needed in section 8(a)(2) 
of the National Labor Relations Act because of recent decisions that 
have blurred the definition of what are considered terms and conditions 
of employment.
  S. 295 tries to remove the ambiguity by providing a sweeping umbrella 
over all workplace teams and any discussions. In my opinion, this opens 
the window to the possibility of company dominated or sham unions. I 
have long believed that we might be able to fix the language of the 
TEAM Act so as to maintain the flexibility that is required to fit with 
the highly fluid nature of a modern workplace team and still build in 
protections for workers' rights and interests in this process.
  S. 295 needs to be fixed. We have not been able to do so. 
Accordingly, I will vote against the bill. I regret that the two sides 
on this important issue cannot be brought together on common ground. 
Some of the explanation is in the atmosphere of hostility that has 
traditionally surrounded labor-management issues in our country. In 
part, the result flows naturally from the very different views that the 
two sides have of the relationship between employees and employers. Of 
course, to some extent, the result is a natural consequence of the 
political season that we are in.

  Although the script for what is to happen with this legislation this 
year is known to us all, I hope that in the next Congress we can have a 
more serious and constructive debate about this important set of 
issues.
  In many companies throughout the country, the workplace of 1996 is 
not the workplace that Congress was reacting to when the Wagner Act was 
passed in the 1930's. For many, the term ``empowering workers'' is not 
just hollow rhetoric. On the other hand, all employers do not concern 
themselves with the rights and prerogatives of workers. The concerns 
that unions have raised are well rooted in our Nation's history.
  At a future date I hope we can see adoption of some well-reasoned and 
balanced reforms to the law that clearly is not possible today. Mr. 
President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. I thank my friend and colleague 
from North Carolina, Senator Faircloth, for allowing me to go forward 
for just a few minutes.
  I want to follow, very briefly, on what the Senator from New Mexico 
has said and basically to say that I associate myself with his remarks, 
as sad as that conclusion is here.
  This is a case of the TEAM Act where, it seems to me, both sides, as 
it were, labor and management, had some merit to their arguments. There 
should have been a way to put this together and bring about some change 
in the law that recognizes, respects, and facilitates the extraordinary 
changes--in some ways the revolution--that have gone on in labor-
management circles in this country that the team proposals and programs 
are part of, and thousands of employers throughout America, and yet to 
have done that in a way that does not threaten the organized labor 
movement and does not inadvertently, one hopes, open the door to some 
of the practices of the past, as Senator Bingaman has referred to, such 
as sham unions or employer dominated unions.
  This was a case where reasonable people should have been able to sit 
down and reach a reasonable conclusion that would have brought about 
change. I really thank the Senator from New Mexico for the leadership 
he showed in this in trying to make this happen. He is a consummately 
reasonable person and has tried to pursue in a rational way that course 
in this matter. I followed his actions and tried to support them, in 
terms of the work that he was doing as they were going along.
  I regret that in the end he concluded that the amendment that he had 
prepared really could not be introduced because it was not going to 
facilitate the kind of movement that is needed here to create change. 
So the result, unfortunately, in this polarized environment is--
polarized for exactly the reasons that the Senator from New Mexico 
states; one, because the debate over this bill has in some sense 
continued a kind of labor-management negotiation with mistrust on both 
sides; and, also, it is obviously an election year.
  The result of all this, I presume, is that Congress will pass this 
bill, but the President will veto it. Then we will be at the status 
quo, which is not, in this case, terrible because as some I talked to 
in this debate have said, well, maybe a lot of businesses are running 
good employer-employee teams in their workplaces who are technically 
violating the law, but the NLRB is not taking action against them 
unless, in those relatively few cases, there is a complaint associated 
with an organization driven by a union, and then the penalty is to 
order them to stop doing what they are doing.
  I wish we could have come to a better result. The truth is that these 
employer-employee teams--I have seen some of them in Connecticut. When 
they work well, they work very well. They not only are great for the 
workers; they are great for the management and great for American 
competitiveness and great for job creation and the sustaining of 
existing jobs. However, like everything else, they can be misused. They 
can be misused in a way that runs right into some of the original goals 
of section 8(a)(2) of the National Labor Relations Act. Again, there 
ought to have been a way we could bring this together.

  I regret the Senator from New Mexico reached the conclusion he did. I 
regret that there will not be a proposal here on the floor that I feel 
I can support. I am very, very sad that we as a body and I as one 
Senator reach that conclusion. I can only say that I hope that all of 
us can come back, both sides, outside of the Chamber and all of us 
inside the Chamber, next year and work with the executive branch at 
that time to fashion a bill that will acknowledge the extraordinary 
steps forward in labor-management relations, and yet the continuing 
need to protect workers, both in their right to organize and in their 
right to be members of employee management associations that are not 
employer dominated.
  I thank the Chair. Again, I thank Senator Faircloth. I yield the 
floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under a previous order, the Senator from North 
Carolina, Senator Faircloth, will be recognized.

[[Page S7510]]



                     THE NATIONAL RIGHT TO WORK ACT

  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. Mr. President, Thomas Jefferson said, ``To compel a 
man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions 
in which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.'' At noon today, the 
U.S. Senate will hold a historic vote on legislation to repeal those 
provisions of Federal law which require employees to pay union dues or 
fees as a condition of employment. This vote is long overdue for the 
working men and women of this country.
  Since I introduced the National Right to Work Act, 22 of my Senate 
colleagues have joined me as cosponsors. We share the belief that 
compulsory unionism violates a fundamental principle of individual 
liberty, the very principle upon which this Nation was founded. 
Compulsory unionism basically says that workers cannot and should not 
decide for themselves what is in their best interest, that they need a 
union boss to decide for them. I can think of nothing more offensive to 
our core founding principles which we celebrated on the Fourth of July, 
a few days ago, than that principle that the working people of this 
country do not have the ability to decide for themselves.
  With this bill, not a single word is added to Federal law. It simply 
repeals those sections of the National Labor Relations Act and the 
Railway Labor Act that authorizes the imposition of forced-dues 
contracts upon working Americans. It simply does away with the 
requirement that people have to belong to a union to hold a job.
  I believe that every worker must have the right to join and 
financially support a labor union if that is what they want to do. 
Every worker should have that right, of his own free will and accord, 
but he should not be coerced to pay union dues just to keep his job. 
This bill simply protects that right, and no worker would ever be 
forced into union membership unless he wants to be.
  Union membership should be a choice that an individual makes based 
upon merits and benefits offered by the union. If a union truly 
benefits its members, then they would not have to coerce them. If 
workers had confidence in the union leadership, if the union leadership 
was honest, upright, and forthright, then they would not need to coerce 
their members to join. A union freely held together by common interests 
and desires of those who voluntarily want to be members would be a 
better union than one in which members were forced to join. If the 
National Right to Work Act were passed, nothing in Federal law would 
stop workers from joining a union, participating in union activity, and 
paying union dues.
  Union officials who operate their organizations in a truly 
representative, honest, democratic manner would find their ranks 
growing with volunteer members who are attracted by service, benefits, 
and mutual interests, not because they are forced against their will 
with no options to be a member of a union and pay union fees in order 
to hold a job. In addition, voluntary union members would be more 
enthusiastic about union membership simply because they had the freedom 
to join and were not forced into it.
  When Federal laws authorizing compulsory unionism are overturned, 
only then will working men and women be free to exercise fully their 
right to work. When that time comes, they will have the freedom to 
choose whether they want to accept or reject union representation and 
union dues without facing coercion, violence, and workplace harassment 
by overbearing--disreputable, in many cases--union bosses.
  A poll taken in 1995 indicates 8 out of 10 Americans oppose 
compulsory unionism--8 out of 10 Americans do not think you should be 
forced to belong to a union to hold a job.
  At noon today, it is my sincere hope that my colleagues will join me 
in defending the fundamental individual liberty of the right to work, 
and will support this bill.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record immediately 
following my remarks an editorial which appeared in today's Wall Street 
Journal, setting forth clearly why this bill should pass.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, July 10, 1996]

                           Labor Independence

       Today members of the U.S. Senate will be counted on a 
     fundamental issue of individual freedom: the right to work 
     without paying union dues or fees as a condition of 
     employment. It's not likely that the effort to remove 
     sections of the 60-year-old National Labor Relations Act that 
     authorize forced-dues contracts will pass. However, the vote 
     will serve as a useful political marker as to which Senators 
     want individual workers to have a say in whether they should 
     continue to pay the $5 billion a year in dues that private-
     sector unions collect.
       No one argues that unions haven't done a great deal of good 
     in representing their members and in the mutual aid programs 
     they've set up. But that cannot justify allowing the forced 
     collection of union dues from workers who don't want to pay 
     them. In many unions, upward of 75% of the dues money goes 
     for political and other activities that have nothing to do 
     with collective bargaining rights. This year unions didn't 
     bother to consult individual workers before they financed an 
     unprecedented $35 million propaganda campaign against the GOP 
     Congress. In its 1988 Beck decision, liberal Supreme Court 
     Justice William Brennan led the Court in ruling that workers 
     were entitled to a refund of dues money not used to represent 
     them, but the Clinton Administration has acted as if Beck 
     didn't exist. That makes today's vote to put Senators on 
     record on the issue of coerced dues all the more appropriate.
       Union leaders themselves were once leery of laws allowing 
     forced membership in their organizations. Samuel Gompers, the 
     father of American labor, warned workers that ``compulsory 
     systems'' were ``not only impractical, but a menace to their 
     rights, welfare and their liberty.'' Public opposition to 
     compulsory unionism has been so great (upward of 70% in most 
     polls) that 21 states have passed ``right-to-work'' laws that 
     allow individuals to opt out of union membership. On the 
     national level, however, reform has been blocked by the 
     formidable power of the unions to raise campaign cash to 
     defeat their opponents.
       North Carolina Senator Lauch Faircloth says the time is 
     right to test the power of union bosses with his bill to 
     remove language from federal labor law that authorizes 
     forced-dues contracts for workers. For the first time in a 
     generation, Senators from right-to-work states will be 
     required to choose between the political power of the unions 
     and the clearly expressed views of their voters. In the past, 
     even liberal Senators such as George McGovern felt compelled 
     to support their states' right-to-work laws. Today, 25 
     Republican and 17 Democratic Senators represent states with 
     such laws. If all of them supported Senator Faircloth, his 
     legislation would pass easily. The fact that many will oppose 
     it deserves to be a campaign issue in the 16 right-to-work 
     states with Senate elections this fall.
       Compulsory union dues are not merely an esoteric issue of 
     whether employers or unions hold the upper hand in federal 
     labor law. The issue goes to the heart of individual freedom. 
     Thomas Jefferson once wrote that ``To compel a man to furnish 
     contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which 
     he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.'' Today we will 
     learn how many Senators agree with Jefferson's sentiment.

  Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. I am delighted to yield.
  Mr. HELMS. I commend the distinguished Senator from North Carolina on 
his excellent remarks about a very serious subject. I do not know 
whether this Senate is going to try to act on this bill or not, but I 
want him to know that I am honored to be a cosponsor of the bill.
  Now, did I understand the Senator to say that four-fifths of the 
American people support the concept that working people should not be 
forced to associate with or support any organization or class of 
organization as a condition of getting a job or keeping the job?
  Mr. FAIRCLOTH. That is exactly what the American people believe.
  Mr. HELMS. Maybe one of these days Congress will pay attention to 80 
percent of the people.
  Mr. President, the National Right to Work Act stipulates that 
employers and unions may no longer force American workers to pony up 
union dues as a condition of keeping their jobs. It is about freedom, 
purely and simply. It does not discourage union membership. The 
National Right to Work Act merely says that unions have to garner their 
support the old-fashioned way--they have to earn it.
  Of course, there are those who suggest that this legislation is 
somehow antiunion, those who parrot the apocalyptic pronouncements of 
the AFL-CIO that this is union-busting legislation.
  Nothing could be further from the truth.
  I would suggest that those union bosses opposing the National Right 
to

[[Page S7511]]

Work Act are insecure about their ability to earn the support of the 
workers they purport to represent.
  Opponents of the National Right to Work Act may also suggest that it 
is fair to require employees who enjoy the so-called benefits of union 
membership to share in their costs. Union leaders will complain that 
this Congress should not change this policy.
  Mr. President, union leaders, having bought the horse, are just 
complaining about the price of oats.
  Union bosses lobbied for and jealously guard the privilege of 
exclusive representation. They will not give it up. And if you have any 
doubts about that, then the answer is not to oppose this modest effort 
to limit union coercion, but to repeal exiting provisions of Federal 
labor law providing for exclusive representation. I recall that union 
lobbyists say that this is a free-rider bill. The National Right to 
Work Act is not so much a free-rider bill as existing Federal labor law 
is forced-rider legislation.
  Doubtless, too, we will hear complaints that there are more important 
issues facing Americans. There will be claims that this issue is being 
pursued by a narrow special interest.
  My colleagues should bear in mind that polls indicate that fully 76 
percent of the American people--including a clear majority of union 
members--support the principle of right to work. Just yesterday, the 
administration and various lobbying groups were telling us that an 
increase in the minimum wage should be passed because 70 percent of the 
American people support it.
  My suspicion is that that they find this high level of support for 
right to work to be less persuasive, just as they have failed to 
support our efforts to pass a balanced budget amendment, 
notwithstanding the support of overwhelming majorities of Americans.
  After all, this administration's Secretary of Labor seems more 
interested in advancing the agenda of organized labor, rather then the 
rights and interests of all American workers. This is, after all, the 
administration which attempted to rewrite Federal labor law for Federal 
contractors, to deny to Federal contractors the right permanently to 
replace striking employees. The courts have rightly voided this 
usurpation of congressional authority.
  Furthermore, the Secretary of Labor said, and I quote, ``In order to 
maintain themselves, unions have got to have some ability to strap 
their members to the mast. The only way unions can exercise 
countervailing power is to hold their members' feet to the fire.'' 
Whether or not that mast is attached to a sinking ship in something 
that the Secretary seems not to have considered.
  Make no mistake about it, Mr. President, those who oppose this bill 
today oppose freedom. They make clear their ratification of Secretary 
Reich's sentiments, that this Congress believes that union bosses know 
better than individuals what is in the interests of individual American 
workers. I would respectfully suggest that this is a concept foreign to 
the American way of thinking. And does anyone seriously suggest that 
Republican majorities were sent to both Houses of this Congress in 
order to perpetuate the power of union bosses to force Americans to 
support their narrowly radical social and political agenda?
  But perhaps there is another explanation. After all, look at the most 
vocal of opponents to this act. Is it mere coincidence that they 
benefit from the forced-dues, soft-money political contributions of big 
labor? Is it just an accident that the bulk of union political 
activities and contributions benefit my friends on the other side of 
the aisle almost to the exclusion of contributions to the GOP? Is it 
surprising that an administration which promises to veto this bill, if 
passed, has the nearly unanimous support of the leaders of the AFL-CIO?
  I urge my colleagues to support the National Right to Work Act 
because it is the right thing to do. It is a vote for worker freedom, a 
vote for responsible unions. American workers deserve the protection of 
a National Right to Work Act, the protection of a basic personal 
freedom. American working men and women deserve to be able to work and 
feed their families without paying tribute to anyone, much less a class 
of specially protected organizations.
  Mr. CONRAD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  (The remarks of Mr. Conrad pertaining to the introduction of S. 1939 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')

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