Heading For An Override?

The legislation had not even come to a vote when Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas implored his colleagues to repeal it "in a future year." A future nonelection year, Gramm might have added. The Senate, a third of whose members must face the voters this year, was about to pass a broadly popular bill requiring plant owners to notify workers 60 days in advance of closings or wholesale layoffs. Despite Ronald Reagan's threatened veto, 19 Republicans joined 53 Democrats to forge a 72-to-23 victory. With that lopsided vote, the bill's supporters can easily override a presidential veto -- if it comes.

And it may not come. Urged on by many businessmen, Reagan last May vetoed an omnibus trade bill because it contained the notification provision. Overridden in the House, the veto was sustained by a precarious five-vote margin in the Senate. The Democrats, emboldened by polls indicating that 82% of voters favored advance notification, continued to push for the measure. The bill's sponsors cited a 1985 study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that more than half of the 2.2 million workers involved in large-scale layoffs each year received one day's notice or less before being thrown out of work. Had the law been in effect over the past two years, said its backers, more than 1.6 million laid-off workers would have received advance word. Said Robert Byrd, the Senate Democratic leader: "It's not a labor issue. It's a fairness issue."

Above all, it was a political issue. Reagan's veto allowed the Democrats to remind voters that they are the party of the workingman. Their strategy: separate the trade bill (which both business and labor want) from the plant- closing provision, virtually daring Republicans to vote against the latter. Chortled a Democratic aide: "We win either way. The working stiff gets his notification, or we have one hell of an issue right through to November."

Happily faced with a no-lose situation, Byrd, who sponsored the bill along with Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, repeatedly turned back Republican pleas for compromise. Once armed with the votes, they handily defeated an amendment that would have exempted layoffs, as opposed to outright plant closings, from the 60-day notification requirement.

The bill seems sure to pass the heavily Democratic House, perhaps as early as this week. If Reagan vetoes it in the face of all but certain overrides in both House and Senate, he could unwittingly contribute to a cause that is most repellent to him: electing Democrats.