A Filibuster Ahead

Bitter fight over a labor bill

"This bill," declared Utah's Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, "is going to attack every basic fiber of the free-enterprise system."

"This bill," declared North Carolina's Jesse Helms, "is designed to unionize the South by federal force."

"We will fight this bill," declared South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, "and fight it to the last."

So began last week what promises to be a major Senate filibuster. It will not recreate the legendary filibusters of the past, however, when tireless orators recited whole books of the Bible while their exhausted colleagues napped on couches in the corridors. More conscious of their collective image nowadays, Senators do stick to debating, however windily, the one and only subject on the agenda. But as Hatch said last week, "Everyone knows that we are now in a period of extended debate." And just how extended? Says Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, who firmly supports the bill: "We're not going to quit in two weeks--or three weeks, or four weeks."

What Byrd, the White House and some 54 Senators are fighting for is the so-called labor-reform bill, which would amend the 1935 National Labor Relations Act. In general, it would make it easier for unions to organize workers and harder for companies to oppose unionization. Specifically, the bill would:

> empower the National Labor Relations Board to set wages for newly unionized workers if an employer is deemed not to have bargained in good faith;

> give workers fired for union organizing activities time-and-a-half in back pay;

> enlarge the NLRB from five to seven members to speed up handling of complaints of unfair labor practices;

> reduce from 45 days to 30 days the legal organizing period, so as to give management less time to fight unionization.

Ever since the House passed its version of the bill last October, various business groups have organized an intense campaign against it in the Senate. Opponents of the bill argue vehemently that it would be hugely inflationary and would bankrupt many small non-union firms.

Undeniably, the textile factories of the South are a major target for the AFL-CIO, which has seen the unionized portion of the American labor force slip from 26.6% ten years ago to 24% today. AFL-CIO President George Meany professes surprise at what he calls business's "holy war" against the Senate bill. He claims the battle should be solely between the unions and "lawbreaking corporations."

Since the opponents of the bill know that they are at least five nays shy of defeating it in a direct vote, they are trying to make sure that they control the 41 votes needed to prevent any shut-off or cloture of their "extended debate." Hatch claims that the opponents have enough votes to keep debate going through the first four or five cloture votes, but after that the count becomes more uncertain.

Labor's best hope is that the Senate will simply tire of the debate and that cloture will be voted. But even such a vote will not assure a speedy passage of the measure. The opponents' fall-back strategy, one that will almost surely be used, calls for as many as 500 amendments to be proposed. Once cloture has been voted, no debate is allowed on the amendments, but just getting one through the parliamentary process takes almost 1 1/2 hrs. If all the amendments planned are actually offered, then, the very processing of them could take more than three months.

The prospect of a lengthy filibuster, by oration or amendment, makes labor forces fearful. Their chief concern is that either Byrd or Carter might decide that the Senate has to move on to other matters. For Carter, after recent victories in the Senate on the Panama Canal treaties and the warplane sale to Middle East countries, the labor bill might not seem a do-or-die proposition. But much is at stake. With congressional elections ahead. Carter can ill afford to back down on a bill so badly wanted by organized labor.

With so many other important matters to be debated--the energy bills, tax law adjustments, hospital cost limits, civil service reform and urban assistance, a long, bitter fight over the labor bill cannot help either the Senate or the country. As Senator Henry Jackson complained to a group of reporters: "The system is breaking down; we can't go on as we are."

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