Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 6, 1994 TAG: 9409070043
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: C-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Newsday
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If not, one may be on its way.
Corporate America is quietly making more use of employees when it wants to make known its positions on Capitol Hill.
Still, many workplace experts and civil libertarians said they were surprised when IBM Corp. recently asked its employees to write lawmakers to urge defeat of some health care reform bills. The experts said they thought Big Blue's actions were intimidating to employees, who may be worried about their jobs as the computer-maker slashes its work force.
But IBM is not alone. Large companies that use employees as lobbying tools in front of Congress say there's nothing wrong with the practice. They also say they plan to enlist their workers even more as such issues as health care occupy center stage in Congress, where views of ordinary voters are supposed to be taken to heart.
The impact on members of Congress of thousands of employee-signed letters is not lost on big companies. ``These letters are coming from their constituents. That's the way the system is supposed to work,'' said Patrick Morrisey, a spokesman for General Motors Corp., which recently asked workers to write Congress concerning proposed fuel efficiency standards.
But not everyone thinks it's a good idea. Gerald Meyers, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Graduate School of Industrial Administration in Pittsburgh, said IBM and other companies are making a mistake by asking workers to help them lobby.
``I think [IBM] abused a communication device,'' Meyers said, referring to the company's electronic-mail system. He said it raises a question of whether employees are acting of their own free will. ``It will be viewed as a threat by those who don't consider it in their contract,'' he said. ``There's an implicit threat in all this, and to some people, that's enough to make them anxious.''
Although the media described the IBM story as something of a corporate oddity, AT&T Corp. had employed the same tactic only a month before. AT&T wanted to support a bill by Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., that would set strict ground rules for local telephone companies who want to get into AT&T's business of supplying long-distance phone service. Virginia Gold, an AT&T spokeswoman, could recall only one other time the company took such an action - 14 years ago, when Congress was debating telephone divestiture.
Sometimes, company campaigns are even more organized. Some 16,000 tobacco company employees descended on Washington, D.C., in March to protest Clinton administration plans to triple the cigarette tax. The group included 6,400 from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. ``The company did pay their day's wage to go there,'' said Reynolds spokeswoman Dee Dee Witt. ``But it was completely voluntary. We felt if they were willing to do that for their industry, we can do something, too.''
``It's very troubling,'' said Lewis Maltby, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer in New York who heads the organization's task force on the workplace. He compares requests by companies for employee assistance in lobbying to sexual harassment. ``You don't ask someone who works for you out on a date,'' Maltby said. ``There's pressure inherent in the situation. It's hard to say no. The right thing is, don't ask.''
by CNB