Monday, Oct. 7, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Hours after talks broke down between West Coast dock workers and shipping lines, President Bush took a first step today toward reopening ports closed by a labor dispute. Bush formed a board of inquiry to determine the impact of a dispute draining up to $2 billion a day from the U.S. economy.
The board will make a quick assessment of the economic damage and determine whether the two sides are negotiating in good faith. Its formation was required under the law before the president can order an 80-day cooling-off period that would force longshoremen back to work. Bush has not decided whether to take that step, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
Bush signed an executive order stating that "continuation of this lockout will imperil the national health and safety" and forming the panel, which must report back to Bush by Tuesday. Bush then would have to make his case in federal court, with Attorney General John Ashcroft asking for a ruling to halt the lockout for 80 days because the dispute is damaging national interests.
A senior administration official said Bush would likely immediately go to court after the board makes its report, and documents released by the administration appeared to lay the groundwork for that move.
"The health of our economy in every corner of America is in jeopardy because of the dispute," the administration argued in a paper prepared for release by the Labor Department. "In many areas of the economy, layoffs have begun, thousands more jobs may be lost, and all Americans may soon begin to pay sharply higher prices for household goods." It included examples of dozens of businesses already hurt by the lockout.
The same paper warned that the lockout could hurt national security, because the armed forces and defense contractors rely on commercial ships that use West Coast ports.
The board's members are former Sen. Bill Brock, R-Tenn., a former U.S. trade representative and labor secretary; Patrick Hardin, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law and one-time National Labor Relations Board attorney; and Dennis Nolan, a professor at the University of South Carolina law school and vice president of the National Academy of Arbitrators.
According to Robert Parry, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the lockout is sapping $2 billion a day from the economy. The White House put the cost at as much as $1 billion a day.
"The country has been patient. We have been patient," said Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. "But now ordinary Americans are being seriously harmed by this dispute."
Chao said that if the president decides to seek an injunction and it is granted by the court, the ports could be re-opened in a matter of one or two days.
Labor Department Solicitor Eugene Scalia told reporters that there had been 11 coast-wide dock work stoppages since the Taft-Hartley Act was passed in 1947 and in all of those cases, the president sought injunctions after convening a board of inquiry. In at least eight of those instances, the 80-day cooling off period failed to resolve the dispute and the work stoppage resumed once it was over. The last coast-wide dock stoppage occurred in 1971, Scalia said.
The Pacific Maritime Association, which represents shipping companies and terminal operators, has locked out 10,500 members of the longshoremen's union, claiming the dockworkers engaged in a slowdown late last month.
The association ordered the lockout until the union agrees to extend a contract that expired July 1. The main issues are pensions and other benefits and whether jobs created by new technology will be unionized.
Labor talks broke off in San Francisco late Sunday night after the union rejected the latest contract proposal.
Steve Sugerman, a spokesman for the Pacific Maritime Association, said the shippers' offer "would have made their members the highest-paid blue-collar workers in America." The contract offer would have given union members an increase in pay, complete health care coverage with no premiums and no deductibles and a $1 billion increase to the union's pension plan.
The PMA offered to reopen the West Coast ports if the union agreed to a 90-day contract extension to finalize the new contract, Sugerman said.
A call to union President James Spinosa was not immediately returned early today.
Bush's decision came after days of debate within the White House. Some advisers have warned Bush that intervening in the shutdown could energize the Democratic Party's labor base weeks before the midterm elections, and that Taft-Hartley, the law that allows the president to order a cooling-off period, has a poor history of resolving labor disputes.
Others, however, say Bush can't ignore the economic implications of a prolonged shutdown, both for political and policy reasons.
The lockout entered its second week Monday, with the number of cargo vessels stranded at West Coast docks or backing up at anchor points rising to 200. Dozens more were still en route from Asia.
archive
