Peace with Jimmy War on the Hill

During the last lap of his run for the presidency, Jimmy Carter was delighted to accept the belated support of organized labor. Once in the Oval Office, however, the conservative Georgia Democrat spent much time soothing largely Republican businessmen, while seeming to slight all sorts of cherished labor goals. Reflecting on Carter's lack of concern for such labor pets as common situs picketing, which would have enabled a single union to shut down a construction site, AFL-CIO President George Meany groused that Carter's record on labor legislation was "a lot of talking but very little action." Last week, in a major effort to woo back the unions, the Administration produced a veritable bouquet of pro-labor proposals.

Most important was a call the President planned to issue this week for amendments to the National Labor Relations Act that would make it easier for unions to organize and recruit new members. Labor chiefs have long complained that employers have taken advantage of various quirks in the labor law to hamper union organizing. This is one reason, they claim, why total union membership (now 20.1 million) has shriveled from almost a third of the U.S. work force in 1955, when the AFL-CIO was formed, to less than a quarter today.

Despite outward signs of a growing rift between labor and the Administration, the reform package had been under negotiation for about three months between Meany and Carter aides. To get Carter's support, labor agreed to put aside temporarily its campaign to repeal

Section 14B of the Taft-Hartley Act. which permits states to bar labor contracts requiring all workers to join unions. The AFL-CIO also agreed to scratch a proposal that would have enabled unions to become exclusive bargaining agents in a workplace if a majority of employees signed membership cards. The move, in some instances, would have eliminated the need for Government-supervised elections to decide union representation.

The new Carter proposals call for the most extensive revisions in the Labor Relations Act since 1959, when Congress passed the largely promanagement Landrum-Griffin Act. The new bill would:

1) Enlarge the National Labor Relations Board from five to seven members to speed up judgments in management-labor disputes. At present, the full board must pass on decisions. Under the revised procedures, only two members would be needed for approval.

2) Establish precise deadlines for the board to schedule union-representation elections when a union has signed up the required 30% of the employees in a workplace. At present, action on some of these cases is sluggish.

3) Require the board to seek court enforcement within 30 days, unless an employer files an appeal within that time. Under current law, the board can act when it wishes.

4) Withhold Government contracts from employers who willfully violate the law.

5) Double the back pay for an employee if the board finds that he was fired for taking part in union activity. At present, such employees merely receive the pay they lost.

The President also threw his weight behind two other pro-union measures. At his midweek press conference. Carter announced that he would support an increase in the minimum wage from the current $2.30 to $2.65. effective next Jan. 1. The proposal, made by the House Education and Labor Committee, would tack an automatic escalator clause onto the minimum wage law for the first time. It would gradually lift the minimum wage to 53% of the average straight-time earnings of manufacturing workers by Jan. 1. 1980--or to an estimated $3.15 an hour. This represents a considerable Carter compromise. Originally, the White House proposed an initial increase to $2.50 an hour, with future increases pegged to 50% of the manufacturing wage: labor wanted a boost to $3. with an escalator equal to 60% of the manufacturing wage.

Promotional Blitz. Finally, the President also agreed to redeem a campaign pledge to the maritime unions, whose members provided generous financial support (an estimated $6 million) for his campaign. Carter agreed to back legislation that would require at least 9.5% of all U.S. oil imports to be shipped in American-flag vessels by 1982. Greater use of the more expensively operated U.S. ships would eventually create jobs for 2.500 additional U.S. seafarers and. at the very least, add $110 million in increased transport costs to the nation's oil import bill.

Carter's actions have taken a good deal of strain out of the relationship between the White House and the AFL-CIO. The President's endorsement of the three bills provided a needed lift for labor, which has been generally outflanked in its legislative battles this year by a revitalized coalition of business lobbyists. At the same time, labor has begun to accept the fact that it no longer wields the clout it once had among congressional Democrats; it needs presidential support and is willing to settle for less than its earlier grandiose goals to obtain it.

To gain popular acceptance for their bills, the unions are planning a lengthy. $800,000 promotional blitz featuring newspaper ads, talk-show appearances and a massive direct-mail campaign. White House aides even solicited views of business leaders to find ways to soften opposition to labor-law reform and an increased minimum wage. Still, employers generally remain hostile to both measures. A coalition of business lobbyists, backed by a war chest of more than $1 million," is planning what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce describes as "a long and bitter battle" against the labor-reform proposals. Thus the stage is set for what could be one of the harshest congressional clashes of the current session--and a test of Carter's newly professed allegiance to organized labor.

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