Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 18, 1990 TAG: 9007180233
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The action brought an outcry from Republican Leader Bob Dole that the bill was "being rammed down our throats," while White House Chief of Staff John Sununu accused sponsors of backing out on a compromise reached last week.
"If we're going to be treated like a bunch of bums on this side of the aisle, there won't be any agreements on anything," said Dole after the 62-38 vote to limit debate to 30 hours.
Provisions of the bill sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., range from a ban on racial harassment in the work place to punitive damages for victims of intentional discrimination.
The sharpest clashes have come over a provision that would make employee work forces that do not reflect the ethnic and racial makeup of the labor pool from which they were hired more vulnerable to court challenge.
An employer in such a case, if challenged in court, would have to prove that the hiring practices that led to the composition of the work force were justified by business necessity. That would reverse the most controversial of five 1989 Supreme Court rulings on job bias addressed by the bill.
The justices, in a case involving a salmon cannery in Alaska, held that it was up to those who file such lawsuits to prove the practices they objected to were not motivated by business necessity.
The Bush administration, business groups and some GOP senators say the bill would lead to employers using hiring quotas to avert any chance they would incur the costs, including damage awards, of job-discrimination suits.
Bush said last week he was encouraged by the negotiations after Kennedy and Sununu appeared to reach a compromise.
by CNB