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.
Do the math again, regarding the 10,500 times say $125,000 average per worker, I get less than 1.4 billion a year. Why are the owners of the shipping yards crippling the economy when they could satisfy the unions with less than one days' loss to pay all of the workers for the entire year?
Time for regression testing. Major league sports are thriving.
I don't hate everyone in charge of a business and unions aren't all bad.
These people are fighting to keep the high tech work from being done off shore. This info not being reported. The heart of the dispute is who controls the new port jobs that come with installing centralized new logistics systems at terminals to improve operations. That includes software to manipulate shipping data from around the world, optical technology to scan containers, global position satellites to track containers and software to dispatch cranes.. See http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/4201368.htm. These people are tryng to protect high tech jobs!
Do you or did you have tenure?
What planet are you from? If the free market was really operating here, these longshorejerks would be earning about $35K per year . . . or the port operators would start hiring replacement workers.
Why $35K per year? I am sure many foreigners would be willing to work for $10,000 a year if you just give them a ticket and a visa to live in America.
The President could assign armed U.S. Marshals (if there aren't enough regulars some temporarys could be appointed) to BOTH sides. Said Marshals to escort both sides in, and out of the meetings. No private armed guards allowed.
Let us see if the union KKKommunist pawns of the KKKommucratic Party can object to that!
Since there is no contract, management should announce that they're reducing pay by 20% and open the gates. If nobody shows up, they should hire those that want to work. Maybe they'll find guys smart enough to understand barcodes.
I'll bet dockworkers in Vancouver BC and in Mexico are pocketing a lot of OT!
Amen to that. I'm a networking guy. When is the last time a router fell on some nerd and killed him? My dad worked in construction and every so often people (or groups of people) would DIE on the job. The risk factor most certainly should play a role in that pay, as should phyiscal exertion and discomfort. Real easy for a guy sitting in an office to call guys digging a ditch in the 100 degree heat lazy.
I'll bet dockworkers in Vancouver BC and in Mexico are pocketing a lot of OT!
speaking of Mexico, Why, as soon as NAFTA passed, why didn't Mexico build the largest shipyards in the world?
There would be no need for USA west coast longshoremen!
The average salary there would be about $10,000 per year and much of those savings would pass on to our US consumers.
Even Mexican truckers would get some of the pie as they would likely be allowed to deliver goods at least to the southwest USA, and that would further reduce the cost of goods in the stores.
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