Clinton Nudges Businesses to Aid Workers

President Clinton on Thursday jawboned 100 business leaders on the responsibilities of corporations to their employees--and on the ways government can nudge them in the direction it wants without spending money.

Clinton took the White House pulpit and gently bullied businesses to voluntarily provide worker benefits that he has been unable to persuade Congress to mandate--health coverage, workplace child care, job retraining, generous pensions and labor-management teamwork.

The White House Conference on Corporate Citizenship was the outgrowth of a lengthy and divisive political debate within the administration about the wisdom of government intervention in business decisions and how best to address public anxieties about job security.

The activist schemes of Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich were rejected in favor of moral suasion, an effort to use the prestige of the White House to highlight companies that the administration believes are “doing well by doing good” for their employees and communities.

The gathering also attempted to address the anxieties of workers who have seen their standard of living slide even as the economy has grown and Wall Street has prospered. Clinton is trying to appeal to this segment of the electorate, whom GOP presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan mobilized during the Republican primaries by decrying the predations of “corporate butchers” who laid off workers and shipped their jobs overseas.

Clinton said that the goal of the conference was not to propose new government solutions to the vexing problems of an economy in transition.

Rather, he said, it was a forum for successful businesses to share with each other the policies and practices that produce happy workers and contented shareholders.

He posed the conference’s purpose in a series of questions to a panel of executives meeting for the daylong conclave at Georgetown University:

“As the nature of work and the nature of the workplace changes dramatically and we move so rapidly into the 21st century, what do we owe each other in the workplace? What do employers owe employees? What do employees owe employers? What if anything should the government do to help to deal with the new challenges that we face?”

Clinton said that government can do some things to protect workers from the vagaries of the marketplace--increase the minimum wage, provide personal tax incentives for education and training, ensure that pension and health benefits are portable from job to job.

“We know that government should do these things,” Clinton said, “but we also know that most of the action has to be in the private sector.”

Clinton announced the establishment of an annual award named for the late Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown. The prize, to be funded wholly with private donations, would recognize companies that treat their workers well.

Those invited to the conference represented a cross section of American businesses. They ranged from Massachusetts factory owner Aaron Feuerstein, praised for keeping his 2,400 mill workers on the payroll after fire destroyed much of his textile factory, to AT&T; Chief Executive Robert Allen, who has been harshly criticized for his company’s plan to eliminate 40,000 jobs over the next two years.

Among companies making presentations were executives of outdoor clothing company Patagonia of Ventura, which offers day care and flex-time arrangements for workers with children; Optiva Corp. of Bellevue, Wash., which provides both full-time and part-time employees with health benefits and reimbursements for college education; Fel-Pro Inc. of Skokie, Ill., which offers scholarships and savings bonds to all children of its 1,700 employees; and Starbucks Corp. of Seattle, one of the first major retail chains to offer part-time workers similar health benefits as those provided to full-time employees.

Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, told the president and the other executives that the quality of a firm’s products is linked to the care with which it treats its customers and work force.

“So it’s linked--quality product, quality customer service, quality workplace, quality of life for your employees, even quality of life for all living things on this planet,” Chouinard said. “If you miss any one piece, there’s a good chance you’ll miss it all.”

Reich said that some companies are profiting in the short run by laying off workers rather than retraining them for other positions in the business.

“It may be they make money by slashing payrolls. In the long term, they may be slashing their own pocketbooks,” Reich said in an interview. “Those who invest in their workers and treat them as long-term assets end up doing better in the long run.”

Reich has proposed creating new tax credits for corporations that adopt family-friendly policies and subsidize educational and training expenses incurred by their workers. But his ideas have been rejected by other administration officials, and the White House has not pushed Congress to take them up.

Business consultant James E. Schrager, who also is a lecturer at the University of Chicago School of Business, said that the answer to the dislocations of the American economy and increased global competition is less government intervention, not more.