Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 16, 1993                   TAG: 9306160211
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

HOUSE OKS STRIKEBREAKER BAN

The House approved the measure 239-190 and sent it on to the Senate, where its prospects appeared bleak.

Conservative Democrats, annoyed at being forced to choose between labor and business, said the chances of Senate passage were so dim that the House should not have acted on the bill.

Among Virginia's House delegation, no Republicans voted for the bill and all Democrats did except for L.F. Payne of Nelson County, Norman Sisisky of Petersburg and Owen Pickett of Virginia Beach, who voted against it. Rep. Rick Boucher, Abingdon, did not vote.

"It's such a divisive issue, with no chance of success at all," said Rep. Pete Geren, D-Texas. ". . . Why in the world are we doing this?"

But Democratic leaders wanted the House to go on record in support of the so-called "strikebreaker" bill.

Before final passage, the House defeated, 373-58, a Republican compromise proposal that would ban hiring permanent replacements during the first 10 weeks of a strike but allow it after that.

Lawmakers were asked to act on the strikebreaker bill within days of a difficult House vote on President Clinton's deficit reduction tax package. After going out on a limb to support the president on that measure, the House members watched as the Senate refused to pass it.

Some suggested they were being marched out on a limb again, with chances of Senate approval if anything even more remote.

The strikebreaker bill's chances in the Senate aren't considered much better this year than they were in 1991, when the threat of a Republican filibuster and a Bush administration veto killed the legislation. The House had passed the bill that year.

President Clinton has said he'd sign the measure, but Senate Republicans are expected to filibuster again. Even the AFL-CIO concedes the bill has scant chance in that chamber.

Under 50-year-old labor law, companies always have had the right to keep operating during strikes and hire replacement workers when the dispute centered on economic issues such as wages or benefits.

But few companies ever exercised that option until recent years.