Clinton Praises Southland Company
Inaugurating a road tour to coax better citizenship from corporate America, President Clinton stopped at Harman Industries on Friday to praise the efforts of the Northridge audio-products maker to hold down layoffs as it competes in a turbulent world market.
Clinton examined the company’s assembly lines and addressed 1,200 Harman workers with remarks that made clear his intention to use the gentlest persuasion--rather than the forceful tactics advocated by some aides and allies--to persuade U.S. business to look out for its anxious workers.
Clinton urged companies to be “good citizens . . . within the limits of their capacity.” Accompanied by Sidney Harman, the company’s chairman, Clinton said the company’s program of offering alternate jobs to temporarily laid-off workers “shows how a company can do right while doing well by its employees.” He had come, he said, in hopes that other companies would see the wisdom of Harman’s example.
“It’s just one solution, but it’s a solution that deserves to be considered all across America,” he said. “And I hope that . . . people will ask themselves: ‘I wonder if I could do something like that.’ ”
Clinton’s visit, on the first day of a two-day California trip, came amid a pitched debate among his economic advisors about how the president should deal with the questions of wage stagnation and corporate downsizing that have emerged with growing importance in the Republican campaign to nominate a presidential candidate.
Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, joined by some congressional Democrats, has been arguing that the administration should advocate tax breaks to encourage companies to offer higher pay and benefits, more job security and better workplace practices. But others, including Laura D’Andrea Tyson, chairwoman of the National Economic Council, and Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, have contended with equal vigor that such an approach would be misguided as policy and politics.
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Clinton has been considering ways to prod corporate America to improve its corporate citizenship. And he plans a series of intermittent visits to companies considered to be exemplary, including coffee franchise Starbucks Corp. and defense contractor United Technologies Corp.
But Friday’s address indicated that he intends to rely on mild persuasion rather than tactics with more of an edge.
Harman is a former Carter administration official and is married to Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills). His company, known for its high-end audio speakers, had sales of $1.2 billion in 1995.
The firm has won attention for its “Off Line Enterprise” program, in which it puts employees who might otherwise be laid off during slowdowns to work building clock faces from wooden speaker-cabinet scraps. The company also has worked to offer employees continuing job training.
Sidney Harman acknowledged Friday that his company laid off 250 workers just a week ago, after a slide in the retail market. But he said the employees will be back in 30 to 40 days at alternative jobs with no interruption in their benefits. “That’s sending a strong message to people that we care about you, we care about your security,” he said.
Clinton hailed as a major triumph news from Washington that the economy had created 8.4 million jobs since the beginning of his term. Noting that he had held out 8 million jobs as the goal of his first term, he said: “I am very proud of that.”
And he said the 8.4 million is more jobs than were created in Europe and Japan combined during the period, asserting that, “increasingly, they are in higher-wage industries.”
Economists, however, say that while the achievement is real, the goal was only modestly ambitious.
“This was never going to be a major assignment” for the economy, said Robert Dederick, an economist at Northern Trust Bank in Chicago. He suggested that Clinton may have been wise to set a modest goal because George Bush, his predecessor as president, had set a target twice as high and failed to meet it.
The presidential campaign in California is expected to focus intensely on how much progress the state’s economy has actually made since 1992. During the Northridge stop, Clinton took the opportunity to make his case.
“Four years ago, California had lost about 170,000 jobs,” Clinton said. “Today California businesses in the last three years have created almost half a million jobs.”
Though many aerospace workers continue to suffer from defense cuts, Clinton asserted that “industries like aerospace and entertainment and computers are leading the world with new markets, new production, new products.”
Clinton’s praise for his administration’s economic record was complicated slightly by news that the Dow Jones industrial average had lost more than 170 points on Friday. But aides pointed out that the index is still up a healthy 7% since Jan. 1 and that it had risen from about 3,300 to about 5,400 in the course of Clinton’s term.
Clinton spent about two hours on Friday evening at the Malibu home of entertainment magnate David Geffen with a group of major contributors, including Steve Jobs, founder of the Apple and Next computer concerns; Susie Buffett, president of the Buffett Foundation; Edgar Bronfman, president of Seagrams Ltd.; August Busch IV, the beer heir; Ted Field, owner of Interscope; Bob Shays, chairman of New Line Cinema; Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of Miramax Films, and Skip Brittenham, an entertainment lawyer.
This morning Clinton is to visit Ygnacio High School in Concord to take part in “Net Day,” an event that is to mark the wiring of 1,300 state schools to the Internet.
Times staff writer Henry Chu contributed to this story.
