Lateefah Simon: “this is a sense-of-the-Senate resolution regarding a strike situation that we face in this country. Bridgestone/…”

“this is a sense-of-the-Senate resolution regarding a strike situation that we face in this country. Bridgestone/ Firestone is a company wholly owned by a Japanese corporation. They bought Firestone, merged the two companies. They have had a strike on since July. And back, I guess about a month ago, Senator Glenn and Senator Harkin and Senator Moseley-Braun and several of us met with the Japanese Ambassador and urged that they negotiate, that they sit down and negotiate. I, frankly, do not know, in terms of the dispute between labor and management, which side is right. What I do know is that they ought to sit down and negotiate. But the Bridgestone/Firestone has announced they are going to fire all the strikers and permanently replace them. That is--I have been doing some checking--we have had only two precedents like that since the 1930's. We have had no striker replacement law, as Western Europe and Canada and the other countries do, but we have had a tradition that you do not do that. And this resolution simply says to the corporation: Sit down and negotiate, rather than just firing several thousand workers. I would hope that we could adopt this resolution.”