President Clinton, interrupting his vacation for a rain-swept Labor Day address, told a boisterous crowd of iron workers Monday that the holiday celebrates "the dignity of work."
With a new naval destroyer providing a towering backdrop, Clinton said his efforts to reduce the federal deficit "over the enemies of change" helped middle-class Americans."Our administration has fought for change against some very, very powerful enemies of change," he said.
Clinton used the Bath Iron Works and the under-construction USS Laboon as a symbol of how American bosses and workers are "unstoppable" when they work with employers and the government for the common good.
"We can rebuild this economy on the strength of your example," he said.
He made a special plea to Major League baseball owners and players. "On this Labor Day, there's still time for them to go back to work and finish the best baseball season in 50 years, and I hope they will," Clinton said.
Clinton arrived here at midmorning in wind and rain to visit the Bath Iron Works. Wearing a leather bomber jacket and construction hard hat, the president stood on the deck of the USS Laboon, a destroyer under construction that will be commissioned in March 1995.
Clinton, who has been vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, was greeted by Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine and Duane Fitzgerald, president and chief executive officer of the Bath Iron Works. About 1,000 people stood in the rain to hear his brief speech.
The trip was also the informal opening of the 1994 campaign season. Clinton was welcomed in a harsh wind and rain at Brunswick Naval Air Station by five local Democrats - Mitchell and four candidates for state and national offices.
Mitchell chided Republicans for warning in 1993 that Clinton's deficit-reduction budget would hurt the economy. "It's been the opposite of what they said," Mitchell told the flag-waving crowd.
A majority of the 5,300 members of the local chapter of the International Machinists Union ratified a contract that creates a new "team" approach to shipbuilding, designed to make the company more competitive by operating more efficiently.
Workers and managers will share the responsibility for major decisions about the company's future.
Instead of continuing the practice of workers concentrating on just one trade, pay increases during the three-year contract will hinge on a worker's skill level in a number of crafts.
Employees who diversify their talents through retraining will be rewarded.
If the plan works it will stand in contrast to the company's acrimonious labor problems in the past. Ending a 99-day strike in October 1985, workers accepted a wage freeze as part of a package that also gave them $2,000 in bonuses.