Plant-Closing Bill OKd by Senate, 72-23

WASHINGTON — Legislation to regulate plant closings and layoffs cleared the Senate on Wednesday by a solid 72-23 majority, more than enough to override a possible veto by President Reagan, as Republicans abandoned their campaign to weaken the bill and instead voted for it in large numbers.

The House is expected to pass the bill next week and send it to the White House, where it awaits an uncertain fate. “I don’t know what the President’s going to do when he gets this bill,” said Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas.

The House leadership also may seek passage next week of a modified version of the omnibus trade bill, which Reagan vetoed in May, largely because the plant-closing measure was attached to it. The Senate failed by five votes to muster the two-thirds’ majority necessary to make the trade bill law over Reagan’s veto.

The trade bill, stripped of the plant-closing provision and perhaps some other minor features, probably would not reach the Senate floor until September. Reagan may sign the bill in that form.

Wednesday’s hefty Senate majority for the plant-closing bill raised the possibility that Congress might be able to enact separately the provisions that Reagan successfully vetoed when they were united in the omnibus trade bill.

By itself, the plant-closing bill, which would require companies with more than 100 employees to give 60 days’ notice of a plant closing or a major layoff, cleared the Senate with eight votes more than a two-thirds’ majority.

Nineteen Republicans, many of them from Northeastern and Midwestern industrial states, voted for the labor-backed bill, compared to the 10 who broke with the President and voted for the trade bill.

“We’ve compromised far enough,” said Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio). “This is a matter of simple human decency: American workers are entitled to 60 days’ advance notice before losing their jobs.”

A recent Bureau of Labor Statistics study showed that more than 400,000 workers lost their jobs last year to mass layoffs and plant closings. In a 1987 study of layoffs and plant closings in six states, the agency found that 64% of the workers received no notice and another 16% were told less than two weeks in advance.

Wednesday’s final roll call followed an overwhelming 88-5 vote to break a Republican filibuster and shut off debate on the bill. The filibuster had the effect, however, of delaying final House passage of the bill enough to thwart the Democratic strategy of forcing Reagan to sign or veto the popular bill before the Democratic National Convention, which begins July 18.

Before the bill cleared the Senate, Republicans offered clarifying and moderating amendments.

Dole and the most vocal GOP opponents of the measure, including Sens. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, Dan Quayle of Indiana and Phil Gramm of Texas, stayed with the shrunken minority that voted against the bill on final passage.

Most of the Republican modifying amendments the Democrats accepted amounted to technical clarifications. Republicans were rebuffed, however, when they proposed substantive changes.

Quayle proposed that advance notification of layoffs be required only if the number of workers to be laid off exceeded 500 or represented at least half of the work force of the company. Plant closings would require 60 days’ notice only if more than 75 workers would be affected.

The bill, by contrast, would require prior notice of layoffs involving as few as 33 employees and plant closings involving as few as 50. Quayle’s amendment was defeated, 63 to 32.

Republican Sen. Pete Wilson of California proposed that companies be exempted from the bill’s requirements if they were unexpectedly cut off from vital production materials.

But Metzenbaum, a chief sponsor of the bill, pointed out that it already exempted companies stricken by unforeseeable economic circumstances and that a Dole-backed amendment to exempt businesses hit by drought and other natural disasters was accepted last week. Wilson’s amendment was rejected, 58 to 37.