Court Rejects Bid To Protect Strikers Clinton Sought To Bar Contracts To Firms That Permanently Replaced Striking Workers

A federal appeals court on Friday overturned a White House effort to protect striking workers, throwing out an order by President Clinton to cut off federal contracts for companies that permanently replace the strikers.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court declared unanimously that the National Labor Relations Act gives employers “the right to permanently replace economic strikers as an offset to the employees’ right to strike.”

The decision drew a quick response from Clinton, who said he would ask the Justice Department “to take all appropriate steps to have this decision overturned.”

Clinton issued the executive order March 8, 1995. It met with considerable applause from organized labor, which was still smarting from the president’s aggressive campaign on behalf of two major trade agreements - the North American Free Trade Agreement and the revision of global trade regulations that created the World Trade Organization. The AFL-CIO feared the two pacts would increase U.S. imports of foreign goods, at the expense of jobs for American workers.

In issuing the order, Clinton said that strikes in which replacement workers were hired were longer and more bitter than other strikes. Thus, they could interfere with government purchases and hamper the nation’s economy.

The dispute over replacement workers and federal efforts to protect strikers spiraled over the past decade, after President Reagan permitted the hiring of replacements for the striking air traffic controllers he had fired in 1981. By 1994, it had become one of the fiercest labor-management battles in a generation, and engendered bitter debate in Congress.

Eventually, Congress rejected legislation that would have prevented corporations from firing strikers and permanently replacing them with nonunion workers, and Clinton issued the executive order. It was challenged first in District Court, which upheld the White House.

The appellate court’s decision Friday, said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, “serves employers who want to wage war on workers and hurts the rest of us.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which sought to overturn Clinton’s order, argued that the president had violated employers’ rights.

The organization also contended that Clinton had not linked the order to savings in government procurement costs, as required under government buying regulations.

Associations representing builders, bakers, grocers, manufacturers, and truckers, among others, joined the chamber in its appeal.