Labor's Setbacks in Congress Multiply As Some Longtime Backers Break Ranks

Rep. Schroeder and 53 other Democrats voted to kill an AFL-CIO-backed bill that would have required employers to give notice before closing a plant or initiating a big layoff. Even though pro-labor Democrats watered down the bill, it was defeated in a 208-203 vote. The defeat has a broader message:...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Wall Street journal. Eastern edition
Main Author By Leonard M. Apcar and Cathy Trost
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, N.Y Dow Jones & Company Inc 18.12.1985
EditionEastern edition
Subjects
Campaign contributions
Defense contracts
Employers
Employment
Immigration policy
Labor unions
Layoffs
Lobbyists
Workers
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Rep. Schroeder and 53 other Democrats voted to kill an AFL-CIO-backed bill that would have required employers to give notice before closing a plant or initiating a big layoff. Even though pro-labor Democrats watered down the bill, it was defeated in a 208-203 vote. The defeat has a broader message: With Congress moving toward adjournment, the legislative fortunes of labor unions have gone from bad to worse. On votes that pit labor against management, business groups are often winning. Support for the once-sacrosanct labor laws of the 1930s is eroding. And unions are losing the votes of Democrats such as Rep. Schroeder, whose campaign coffers they have helped fund. Ray Denison, the AFL-CIO's legislative director, concedes that "every Congress since 1981 has been a disaster." Before the plant-closing bill, unions failed to defeat a Senate measure that exempted about 90% of Pentagon contracts from the Davis-Bacon Act, a 1931 law that requires government contractors to pay workers the prevailing local wage, usually union scale. Later, in a House-Senate conference, labor managed to save the prevailing-wage rule for most defense work, but only after giving up part of a 1936 law that tightly regulated overtime pay on all government jobs.
ISSN:0099-9660