Senate Confirms Herman as Labor Secretary

WASHINGTON — Alexis M. Herman, whose nomination to be secretary of Labor long had been delayed, finally won Senate confirmation Wednesday after President Clinton abandoned plans to issue a strongly pro-labor executive order telling federal agencies to hire union workers in construction projects.

The president’s strategic retreat may have resolved a political standoff with Senate Republicans but it could antagonize labor groups. Just last February in Los Angeles, Vice President Al Gore had promised a gathering of union leaders that the administration would issue the new rules to strengthen organized labor’s hand in dealings with the hundreds of thousands of firms that do business with the federal government.

Instead of an executive order, Clinton now will issue a memorandum to the same effect--a change that the White House and its Democratic allies in the Senate insist is not substantively different.

Traditionally, an executive order is viewed as more permanent than a presidential memorandum.

But White House spokesman Barry Toiv, while declining to describe the quid pro quo as a victory, said that, “because the directive is essentially intended to encourage agencies, rather than have a mandatory effect, there’s really not a lot of difference.”

Republicans and business interests, for their part, rousingly hailed the change as a victory. The GOP-dominated Senate proceeded to approve Herman’s nomination, 85 to 13. She was the last of Clinton’s second-term Cabinet appointees to be confirmed.

Afterward, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney issued a three-paragraph statement that lavishly praised Herman but was silent on the underlying controversy.

During the impasse, Senate Republicans, led by Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles (R-Okla.), held firm against an executive order even after the White House offered to rewrite it, Senate GOP sources said.

The breakthrough was reached Tuesday night during a telephone conversation between the president and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), sources said.

“Lott floated the memo idea and the White House bit,” one top GOP staff member said.

Looming over the controversy has been the early jockeying between Gore and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000. Gore has been vigorously wooing organized labor, in part because Gephardt is believed to have the inside track with this traditionally Democratic constituency.

“We’re very pleased with the outcome,” Ginny Terzano, Gore’s spokeswoman, said Wednesday. “There is no substantive difference between an executive order and a memo.”

But Nickles argued that there is “a significant difference” between the two, saying that Clinton would have been “legislating by executive order” under his original plan. Unlike an executive order, Nickles said, “a memo doesn’t have the effect of law.”