Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991 TAG: 9103250227
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES J. KILPATRICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The measure would prohibit employers from offering permanent jobs to persons who have replaced union members during a strike. Once a strike ended, the replacements would be fired, and the strikers could return to the jobs they temporarily had left.
If the bill were presented to the president in its present form, said Lynn Martin, the president's new secretary of labor, "his senior advisers would recommend a veto." Such a veto almost certainly would be upheld. Fine with me.
Under existing law, a fair balance appears to have been reached between the conflicting interests of labor and management. If a conflict ends in a strike, both parties run economic risks.
Workers lose the pay they would have earned, and face the ominous possibility that management may hire permanent replacements for them. If a company shuts down, it obviously loses the production that otherwise might have continued. If it resists by keeping in operation, inexperienced replacements must be put on the payroll, trained for their jobs, and suitably rewarded for enduring the hostility of the pickets outside.
If Clay-Metzenbaum became law, we could expect a dramatic surge in the number of strikes. After all, union members would ask, why not strike? They would have much to gain and no jobs to lose.
For whatever reasons, strikes have diminished in recent years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported only 45 strikes last year at companies employing at least 1,000 workers. The figure compares with a record of 437 such strikes in 1953.
One reason for the decline lies in the steady drop in union membership as a percentage of the work force. Only 16.7 million wage and salary employees were union members in 1990. They constituted 16.1 percent of the work force, a record low. Only one-fifth of workers in construction and manufacturing belong to unions, and less than one-fifth in mining.
Evidence of the twilight of trade unionism in America? Don't believe it. Union leaders can still deliver massive political clout in money and services. More than 400 union political-action committees reported record receipts in 1987-88 of $76 million. Democrats got nearly all of it.
In my own troglodyte view, the Clay-Metzenbaum bill violates a basic American principle that every person has a right to work. Its enactment would restore the old indefensible tyranny of union bosses. This might be good for the unions, but what is good for the unions (or for corporations) is not necessarily good for the nation. Universal Press Syndicate
by CNB