McCarthy Uses Plant-Closure Bill to Woo Bay Area Workers

It was just the sort of spot, beside the rusting hulk of an abandoned steel mill, where you might expect to find a meat-and-potatoes Democrat holding forth on the subject of robber barons and Republican heartlessness.

And there was Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy on Monday, his reedy tenor barely audible over the grinding and screeching of a nearby metal salvage operation, giving it to his opponent in the Senate race, Republican incumbent Pete Wilson. McCarthy was accusing Wilson of trying to turn the clock back to “an era when workers had no rights, and only the wealthiest corporate barons had any power.”

McCarthy was drawing as much attention as he could to Wilson’s recent vote against a controversial bill now pending in Congress that would require plant owners to give workers 60 days notice of closings or large-scale layoffs.

“He (Wilson) opposed the bill because of a narrow ideological objection to a common sense provision that gives workers a chance to find new jobs when the company they work for shuts down,” McCarthy said.

Flanked by three unemployed steel workers, McCarthy made his remarks in the shadow of a Judson Steel Corp. mill that employed more than 200 people and was the last producer of raw steel in the Bay Area before it closed two years ago. Former employees who were on hand Monday said the only advance word they received of the mill closure was an announcement that they had 30 minutes to clean out their lockers and leave.

The 60-day notification requirement that Wilson opposes is part of a larger bipartisan bill that is concerned mainly with imposing tougher rules on America’s trading partners. The Senate passed the bill but does not appear to have the votes needed to override an expected veto from President Reagan. Like Wilson, Reagan opposes the bill because of the plant-closure notification requirement.

The issue afforded McCarthy an opportunity he has needed lately to stand up and be counted on a matter close to the hearts of core constituents.

As one aide put it, “It’s a chance for Leo to be Leo.”

Recently, McCarthy has had his hands full in the Bay Area trying to make the case that he, not Wilson, is the true friend of the working man.

Wilson has joined a coalition of local business and labor leaders, many of them Democrats, in a campaign to make San Francisco the home port of the battleship Missouri, a move that would create 7,000 jobs, according to proponents.

McCarthy objects because he says “home-porting” the Missouri is part of a grander plan by the Navy to expand shipyards around the country at a potential cost of $2 billion. McCarthy argues that such an expense is pure pork barrel, coming at a time when the defense budget should be cut.