Posted on 10/07/2002 9:47:54 AM PDT by snopercod
WASHINGTON (AP) - Hours after talks broke down between West Coast port workers and shipping lines, President Bush took a first step toward ordering longshoremen back onto the job Monday. 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 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, asking for a ruling to end the lockout for 80 days because the dispute is hurting the national interest. A senior administration official said Bush would likely immediately go to court after the board makes its report.
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 onetime National Labor Relations Board official; and Dennis Nolan, a professor at the University of South Carolina law school and vice president of the National Academy of Arbitrators.
"Clearly, the longer this goes on, the longer the parties are incapable of reaching an agreement between themselves, the more damage it's doing to America's economy and hurting people who are wholly unrelated to events on the West Coast because they work down the assembly line, they're down the production line or the shipment line, and that's not fair," Fleischer said.
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 country has been patient. We have been patient," said Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. "But now ordinary Americans are being seriously harmed by this dispute."
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 Monday.
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. There also is no love lost between unions and Bush's most conservative advisers, some of whom note with disdain that some of the longshoreman earn more than $100,000 a year.
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.
Analysts and business leaders have warned the shutdown will cause a noticeable increase in plant closings, job losses and financial market turmoil.
Already, storage facilities at beef, pork and poultry processing facilities across the country are full crammed with produce that can't be exported.
With nowhere to move their product, plant operators were expected to begin shutting down Monday, with layoffs soon to follow, said Mary Kay Thatcher, public policy director of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
In less than two weeks, if the shutdown continues, manufacturing plants will be grinding to a halt all over the country, farmers will be up in arms, and Asian equity and currency markets could face a full blown crisis, said Steven Cohen, a University of California, Berkeley professor of regional planning.
"It's like draining a swamp. You start seeing all kinds of ugly creatures," he said.
You paint a rosy picture of unions and the wonders of collective bargaining to stop the greedy companies from profiting from little children...
But what forces are in play to keep the unions from spiralling out of control, demaning more and more, higher and higher wages, less hours per week, until eventually you're paying people 150K per year to work 20 hours a week driving a forklift? Why not 300K for 10 hours a week to push a broom?
The saddest part about this is that the shipping companies have been stupid enough to get themselves into this position, leaving them NO bargaining room whatsoever. When 10,500 union members have the power to shut down all shipping on the entire west coast, that's power baby... and yet we're supposed to believe that their union leaders are only going to wield this power for "the good"? Give me a major break.
To shutdown all west coast shipping because they have technophobia... who's the big meanie here? Some evil coal mining company making 12 year olds work in the mines, or some union members shutting down our country to benefit it's already wealthy membership?
Did some poking around and here's a few lists of "most dangerous jobs" I found, while what shows up where on which list varies one thing I found to be rather consistent: dangerous jobs don't pay too good.
I would have to disagree with you about that. They DO pay good if your in a Union. If not I guess your just assed out.
1. Truck driver - Only pays well in a union.
2. Farm worker - Doesn't pay well. Pays better for union
3. Sales supervisor/proprietor - Primary cause of death is homicide. They are talking people that own small shops they get held up.
4. Construction worker - Only pays well in a union.
5. Police detective - Pays well. Always union.
6. Airplane pilot - Pays well. Always union.
7. Security guard - Only pays well in a union.
8. Taxicab driver - Only pays well in a union.
9. Timber cutter - Only pays well in a union.
10. Cashier - Only pays well in a union.
11. Fisherman - Usally pays well.
12. Metal worker - Only pays well in a union.
13. Roofer - Only pays well in a union.
14. Firefighter - Always union.
Gee. Notice all the most dangerous jobs in the country have strong Unions. I wonder why that is?
In construction at least unions peform and employees pay for ALL of the job training.
We don't have 'free' trade, greedy corporate executive thugs have destroyed more wealth and lost more jobs than these longshoremen and took hundreds, no, thousands of times more compensation than these 10,500 workers.
What's free market about the ripple effect of people who are already higher paid than most corporate executives?
What's the ripple effect of the wealth lost and wealth stolen by corrupt or just over compensated, incompetent corporate executives?
As am I and as are hundreds of thousands of others. If we had formed unions and fought H1-B and didn't fall for phony stock options we might not be unemployed.
As has been stated earlier on this thread, why are forklift drivers making more than highly educated and skilled engineers?
The CEO of Global Crossing cost the economy around 150 billion dollars and received compensation of three quarters of a billion dollars for the destruction he caused.
And he is just one of how many?
The Union was once known on the coast as controlled by the Commies. Now it's the RAT union leaders.
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