THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 13, 1994 TAG: 9406100017
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By LAUCH FAIRCLOTH
DATELINE: 940613 LENGTH: Long
Within the next few weeks, the Senate could decide the fate of Big Labor's Pushbutton Strike Bill (S. 55), also known as the Anti-Striker Replacement Bill, and the fate of right-to-work laws in 21 states.
{REST} The strike bill, supported by President Clinton and co-sponsored by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives and may be as few as two votes shy of passage in the U.S. Senate.
That's bad news for the whole nation, because this bill is pure economic poison.
As a businessman who met a payroll in the private sector for 45 years before coming to the Senate, I know firsthand how devastating this bill will be to industry.
At its heart, this legislation is designed to make calling and winning a strike as easy as pushing a button. It gives union officials virtually unchecked power over employees and employers during a labor dispute.
How?
By compelling employers under penalty of law to (1) punish loyal employees who do their jobs during a union-boss-ordered strike and (2) fire any new employees hired during the strike.
The purpose of these provisions is clear: to punish those men and women who help keep a business running and reward those who try to shut it down.
After all, what workers are going to endure union threats and picket-line violence to go to work and do their job knowing that their employer must, by law, punish, demote or fire them as soon as the strike is over?
It just makes common sense that discouraging men and women from working when they choose is a prescription for economic disaster.
And because the strike bill makes it easier for union officials to coerce workers into following the strike orders, it represents a full frontal assault on one's right to work.
Because of the way federal labor law is written, there are some workers who aren't fully protected by your state's right-to-work law - workers in the airline and railroad industries, construction workers who are forced to seek employment through union ``hiring halls'' as well as workers in what are called ``federal enclaves.''
If Congress enacts the strike bill, union officials will use it to stretch these existing loopholes as big as they can and force countless workers to pay union dues.
That'll blow thousands of little holes in right-to-work laws across America, take money out of the paychecks of hard-working Americans and harm the favorable right-to-work-created industrial climate which has attracted thousands of good jobs to right-to-work states.
That's why the National Right to Work Committee has organized a nationwide citizens' campaign against the strike bill and why I'm working with other concerned senators to organize an extended debate, or filibuster, in the Senate.
A right-to-work filibuster will buy us enough time to focus growing public opposition on the Senate and stop the bill.
We already know Americans are with us.
A scientific public-opinion survey conducted last year by the Marketing Research Institute showed that Americans as a whole oppose this job-killing bill by margins of 2 to 1.
But Americans must make themselves heard in Washington.
At this moment, strike-bill backers are preparing a major lobbying offensive to capture the last few votes they need to ram S.55 into law - and they expect President Clinton himself to be their point man.
The president is desperate to get out of Big Labor's doghouse after the NAFTA vote, and union chiefs have made it abundantly clear that giving them the strike bill would be the perfect peace offering.
For his part, the president appears eager to go along.
At a private meeting between President Clinton and Lane Kirkland a few weeks ago, the AFL-CIO union chief, according to The Washington Post, demanded that the president ``twist a few arms for labor.''
And shortly thereafter, one White House aid told Business Week the White House was ready to ``redouble our efforts'' to pass the strike bill.
That's why it's so important for Americans to redouble their own efforts to stop the strike bill and protect their right to work.
If voters put their senators on notice that they know a vote for the strike bill is a vote to kill the right to work in your state, your senators may just decide they can't afford to sell out the working men and women of their home state to please an already powerful union elite.
Right now, we're outnumbered in the Senate. If virtually any version of S.55 reaches the Senate floor or an up or down vote, it will become law. No one disputes that.
Our only hope of stopping striker-replacement legislation is our filibuster, or extended debate.
Your senators know this. They know a vote against the filibuster is a vote for the strike bill.
The only question is, do they know you know?
With union lobbyists only a few votes from quashing our filibuster and writing the strike bill into law, Americans need to speak out now.
Call and write your senators. Urge them to support the right-to-work filibuster against any and all versions of S.55, Big Labor's Pushbutton Strike Bill, which coerces workers to strike and pay union dues. Tell them you know a vote to end the filibuster is a vote for the strike bill.
Your senators must fight every step of the way to prevent the Big Labor raiding party in Washington from trashing your right to work.
by CNB