NORTHRIDGE — Inaugurating a road tour to coax better citizenship from corporate America, President Clinton on Friday stopped at Harman Industries to praise the audio-products maker's efforts to hold down layoffs as it competes in a turbulent world market.
Clinton examined the company's assembly lines and addressed 1,200 Harman workers with remarks that made clear his intention to use the gentlest persuasion--rather than the forceful tactics advocated by some aides and allies--to urge U.S. business to look out for its anxious workers.
Clinton called on companies to be "good citizens . . . within the limits of their capacity." Accompanied by Sidney Harman, the company's chairman, Clinton said that the company's program of offering alternate jobs to temporarily laid-off workers "shows how a company can do right while doing well by its employees." He had come, he said, in hopes that other companies would see the wisdom of Harman's example.
"It's just one solution, but it's a solution that deserves to be considered all across America," he said. "And I hope that . . . people will ask themselves: 'I wonder if I could do something like that.' "
Enthusiastic Harman employees punctuated Clinton's speech with frequent applause, basking in the limelight trained on the president's only public appearance Friday. Although some workers detected a touch of reelection campaigning during the 40-minute address--delivered in the company's new facility for manufacturing multimedia speakers--many in the audience came away impressed.
"President Clinton is a very human president--he seems more like the people than a bureaucrat," said Kay Lee Dutta, 48, a materials planner from Quartz Hill. "He sounded very passionate."
Dutta's co-worker, Marianne Mandel of Woodland Hills, was so excited by Clinton's appearance that she sent word Thursday night to relatives in Denmark and Germany to catch the speech and his greetings to well-wishers afterward on television.
"I faxed there last night to tell them to watch CNN," said Mandel, 46.
But it "sounded like a little bit of campaigning there, too," said one man who declined to give his name.
Clinton's visit, on the first day of a two-day California trip, came amid a pitched debate among his economic advisors about how the president should deal with the questions of wage stagnation and corporate downsizing that have emerged with growing importance in the Republican presidential campaign.
Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, joined by some congressional Democrats, has been arguing that the administration should advocate tax breaks to encourage companies to offer higher pay and benefits, more security and better workplace practices. But others, including Laura D'Andrea Tyson, chairwoman of the National Economic Council, and Robert E. Rubin, the Treasury secretary, have contended with equal vigor that such an approach would be misguided as policy and politics.
President Clinton has been considering ways to prod corporate America to improve its corporate citizenship. And he plans a series of visits to companies considered to be exemplary, including coffee roaster Starbucks Corp. and defense contractor United Technologies Corp.
But Friday's address indicated that he intends to rely on mild persuasion rather than tactics with more of an edge.
Harman is a former official in the Jimmy Carter administration and is married to Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills). His company, known for its high-end audio speakers, had $1.2 billion in 1995 sales.
It has won attention for its "Off Line Employment" program, in which it puts employees, who might otherwise be laid off during slowdowns, to work building clock faces from wood scraps. The company also has worked to offer employees continuing job training.
Harman acknowledged Friday that his company had laid off 250 workers just a week ago, after a slide in the retail market. But he said that the employees will all be back in 30 to 40 days at jobs with no interruption in their benefits.
"That's sending a strong message to people that we care about you, we care about your security," Harman said.
Clinton hailed as a major triumph the news from Washington that the economy had created 8.4 million jobs since the beginning of his term. Noting that he had set 8 million jobs as the goal of his first term, he said: "I am very proud of that."
And he said that the 8.4 million is more jobs than were created in Europe and Japan combined during the period, asserting that, "increasingly, they are in higher-wage industries."
Economists, however, have said that while the achievement is real, the goal was only modestly ambitious.
"This was never going to be a major assignment" for the economy, said Robert Dederick, the top economist at Northern Trust Bank in Chicago. He suggested that Clinton may have been wise to set a modest goal since George Bush, his predecessor, had set a target twice as high--and failed to meet it.
