President Not Likely To Intervene In Strike Analysts Say Clinton Stance Based On Politics, Not Law

Pressure is building on President Clinton to shut down the strike against United Parcel Service, but the White House shows no sign of bucking organized labor and intervening in the walkout.

White House press secretary Mike McCurry said Thursday that Clinton is unlikely to order Teamsters back to work, even if economic damage from the strike grows worse.

Citing the law that gives the president the power to intervene under certain circumstances, McCurry said it is “hard to imagine how it would come into play in this strike.”

While White House officials - from Clinton on down - say the law ties Clinton’s hands, some legal analysts said Clinton’s reluctance may stem more from the clout of labor unions within the Democratic Party.

“He’d have no trouble getting a court to grant an 80-day injunction here,” since UPS is so important to the economy, said Charles Craver, a labor-law professor at George Washington University Law School. “They (courts) give substantial deference to the president. … I would say this is far more significant than the American Airlines strike.”

When pilots struck American Airlines last Feb. 15, Clinton invoked emergency powers under the Railway Labor Act within minutes of their walkout and kept the airplanes flying.

This strike is different, Clinton told a news conference Wednesday. The UPS strike is governed by the TaftHartley Act, which Clinton said keeps him from acting.

“If you look at the Taft-Hartley Act, there has to be severe damage to the country. The test is very different and very high before the president can intervene. … It’s a very different law from the law that affected the American Airlines case,” Clinton said.

But Craver termed that justification “silly.”

While Taft-Hartley does govern this conflict, it requires only that the president declare that a strike endangers the nation’s health and safety, then that he ask a federal court for an 80-day injunction to halt the strike.

UPS ships 12 million parcels a day - 80 percent of all packages moved by ground transportation in the country. Its service is critical to the nation’s retail trade.

The Teamsters Union shut down UPS Sunday night, when 185,000 of its members walked off the job in protest of the company’s pension proposals and its reliance on part-time workers.

Negotiators for UPS and the striking Teamsters Union returned to the bargaining table Thursday for the first time since the walkout began, but neither side brought a new proposal.

UPS representatives said their last offer remains on the table as their final offer, while Teamsters officials said they would not end their strike until the company agrees to increase the share of full-time jobs in its work force and improves its pension proposals.

Leo Troy, a labor-law authority who teaches economics at Rutgers University’s Newark campus, agreed that Clinton could intervene in the strike.

“If he (Clinton) were really interested in bringing the strike to a halt, he could have pursued that. The decision should have been made by the court,” Troy said.

Politics, not law, ties Clinton’s hands, both analysts suggested. While the president’s intervention in the airline strike upset the pilots union, it lacks the clout of the Teamsters.

“John Sweeney, the president of the AFL-CIO, doesn’t want him to intervene,” Craver noted. “I’m not saying he necessarily should (intervene). One could make the argument that this is really a good time to let the collective-bargaining process work. But I think he’s being disingenuous. … I think the reason he doesn’t want to intervene is more political than it is legal.”

Various units of the Teamsters Union gave the Democratic Party $208,606 and only $500 to the Republican Party in so-called “soft money” in the last federal election cycle, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign finance. Soft money is a term for contributions to political parties and is not subject to federal limits. UPS gave the Democratic Party $251,856, and the GOP $148,825.

Meanwhile, Clinton is coming under growing pressure to act.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked Clinton to intervene, warning that “irreparable harm and massive layoffs … are imminent” if he does not.

Separately, chief executives of some three dozen major retailers - including Sears, Roebuck & Co., Kmart Corp., and Toys ‘R’ Us - pleaded in a letter for Clinton to act, saying “the shipment of goods is our lifeblood.”