Clinton Seen Racing to Rescue on Disputes--’as a Last Resort’
Given the seeming success of President Clinton’s involvement in the American Airlines flight attendants’ strike, the White House has begun sketching out a role for itself in future labor disputes.
Flushed with pride over having persuaded the attendants’ union and management to accept binding arbitration--thus averting a transportation disaster over the Thanksgiving holiday--the Administration is likely to intervene again “as a last resort” if it sees a threat to the public interest.
“He (Clinton) clearly understands--in a way his two predecessors did not--that the public interest is not served by taking a hands-off approach on strike situations that can adversely affect our transportation network,” said Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose), chairman of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation.
Experts, including Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, assert that presidential pressure can be effective, but they also warn that such efforts can pose more dangers than benefits.
Rather than using existing mechanisms for resolving conflicts, companies and unions might feel encouraged to pressure their congressional representatives to use their leverage to involve the White House in the dispute, Reich said.
David Hoppin of MergeGlobal, a consultant firm for air freight and passenger airlines, agreed. “If the parties come to expect him (the President) to jump in, his involvement would become less and less effective,” he said.
While members of Congress and labor analysts saw Clinton’s actions in the American Airlines strike as precedent-setting, Administration officials stressed that unions and management should not expect the White House to intervene as a matter of course.
“I think the White House was very careful to make it clear that this was not setting what they hoped would be a pattern,” said Steve Rosenthal, a spokesman for the Labor Department.
Only in the most extreme situations will the Administration mediate conflicts between labor and management, officials said.
“The Administration will only as a last resort get involved with the actual dispute settlement,” an Administration official said.
With his role in the American Airlines strike, Clinton has set himself apart from earlier presidents, who tended to intercede in labor-management problems only under extreme conditions.
“When presidents have intervened, it was generally under the guise of a national emergency, when there was a risk of the economy collapsing,” said Harley Shaken, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in labor issues. “Here (in the American Airlines case) it was a single carrier and the issue was whether people would get home for Thanksgiving.”
During the Korean War, President Harry S. Truman seized the steel mills after owners refused to abide by a compromise proposed by the Wage Stabilization Board.
And in 1943, as World War II was blazing, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took over the coal mines and ordered miners to dig, after their union demanded a $2-a-day raise for its 530,000 members.
President Ronald Reagan fired 5,100 air traffic controllers who staged an illegal strike in 1981.
But President George Bush vetoed legislation that would have forced him to appoint an emergency board to study the Eastern Airlines strike in March, 1989, and recommend a solution.
To be sure, presidential efforts on behalf of labor disputes have not always been successful public relations moves.
When President Theodore Roosevelt summoned representatives of the United Mine Workers and mine owners to the White House during the 1902 coal strike, the spokesman for the owners embarrassingly defied the President by refusing to accept arbitration. The owners caved in later, only when threatened with a federal takeover of the mines.
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