Bill Clinton: “Well, you know that I have expressed my support for the bill, and I knew you knew that or you wouldn't have asked the…”

“Well, you know that I have expressed my support for the bill, and I knew you knew that or you wouldn't have asked the question. I don't have any idea of whether it can pass the Senate or whether it will at this time. Here is the problem. Let's just talk about the problem. For many years the Federal law was that strikers could not be permanently replaced if they went on strike once a group voted to unionize, if the allegation behind the strike was that there had been an unfair labor practice. But if it was just an economic strike, that is, if the strikers say, ``We ought to be getting a better deal than we're getting, and we're fighting over this contract,'' that they could be permanently replaced. That gave the management of unionized firms a little more leverage in dealing with strikes where the argument was wages and benefits instead of, ``They did something wrong to us.'' And it worked pretty well until the 1980's when the economy became more global and there was more pressure to keep down wages and benefits and when the public mood became decidedly more antiunion in the United States. The reason it worked pretty well is management had the right to do that under a court decision, but they never did it. I mean, it was unheard of. It never happened. For decades no strikes were just broken and people were run off on that account. Then in the 1980's it started to happen with some significant frequency, and that's what led to the pressure for the striker replacement bill. There was almost a compromise adopted in the--and let me just say that this gentleman's question is related to something else. Very few small businesses in America are unionized. A lot of small businesses believe that maybe they'd be more of a target for a union if people thought they could strike over wages and benefits. I personally doubt that very much because of the relationships most people have with their employees in small businesses. But that's really the fear, I think, behind your question. But where it is now is that it's passed the House. They don't have the votes in the Senate yet, and we're talking about whether they can get some sort of compromise to deal with the balance issue that I talked about. The people who are for it in the Congress--I don't mean everybody that's supporting it, but the people who are for it in the Congress have no interest in trying to make it either easier or harder than it is right now for people to organize themselves into unions. The question is whether that once the workers vote to join a union, the bargaining process plays out in a fair and balanced way. And so I think there will be a lot of debate in the next few weeks about whether some compromise along the lines of what they were talking about last time be passed to alleviate some of the fears that you've expressed and still deal with the balance question that came up in the eighties. [Governor Branstad expressed his appreciation for the President's visit.]”