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.
Yeah, that's great and all, but tell me what talent or skill it takes to drive a forklift. Or dig a ditch. There is none.
Unless you want to seriously advocate that it is in our economic interest to have a huge portion of society working at poverty level wages, the market response to low wages is collective bargaining. It avoids the need for any government interference, and everyone goes home happy.
So you have "no problem" with union thugs using violence against workers who are willing to work for the wages being offered?
You need to de-conflict your philosophy, my friend.
Yes, I seriously advocate that employers pay what a job is worth, and I seriously advocate that employees get paid according to the value of their labor.
If it takes no skill to dig a ditch, the pay should be exactly what that job is worth. If an employee has more skill than "no skill", he will find other labor that is a much more efficient use of his skills.
BTW, it takes more skill than you're giving credit for to "drive a forklift". I've seen some people who are absolute artists in this endeavor. They should be paid according to their skill, this is the most efficient use of their labor.
Any skewing of this system of a product (labor or whatever) costing exactly what the market says it should is an inefficiency in our economy that costs everyone.
Labor unions break this system in the worst way - they use FORCE to keep their monopoly on the product of labor, and this hurts the overall economy, and everyone in it.
OTOH, on Sunday the paper had a nice story in which they compared these western U.S. ports with European and Asian Ports. The western U.S. ports (especially the port of Oakland) was right there at the bottom of the barrel as far as productivity goes.
The story didn't go into it, but I'll bet their pay is near the top, but their productivity is near the bottom.
Everyone keeps looking at the wrong issue...I have posted that info (#19) about Daschle on several threads and no one yet has expressed outrage that it exposes that the Dems are behind the foot-dragging by the union to accept an offer in an effort to disrupt the economy further so they can blame Bush.
It's because the job that they perform can be EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, and the likelyhood that they could suffer a serious injury, be killed on the job, or maim or kill someone else job is MUCH more likely than at your average white collar job.
You guys that think they are driving around forklifts at Long Beach and LA harbors haven't a clue. They are using 40-ton gantry cranes called spreaders to place containers into the hold and onto the deck of the ship. The containers are 20 or 40 ft wide. Guys are lowered onto the containers to put cones on them so that more containers can be stacked on a ship. Containers are stacked up to the heavens. If you make a mistake on this job you or someone you work with can lose their life.
This is the main reason they are paid "so much." I noticed none of you mention this in your "free market"-five-dollar an-hour-blue collar labor vs white collar jobs analogies.
BTW: I am a programmer and I would much rather sit on my ass in an air conditions office pounding out code for 80K a year then crawling around 25 above the hold of a cargo container on a crane for a 100K a year.
The dock workers, in response, gather each day by the gates, but they are not "picketing". They are there waiting to return to work when management opens the gates again.
It is NOT a "strike".
I recognize it's not a strike, technically speaking, but you'd never know that from looking at the people involved. I work on Harbor Island in Seattle, and for the past week I've had to drive past the "picketing" (how's that?) workers who are most assuredly not just sitting there waiting to be let back into work. In fact, there's only about a couple dozen guys/gals out there, when I know there are FAR more workers at the terminals here.
I think what burns me most is that they're using all the parking at our office complex here, since they can't park at the terminals. And just the constant annoyance of the rigs driving by "honking" their support... an endless barrage of air horns all day. Try doing your boring desk work with that racket going on for a week.
And speaking of their cars, not to pull a classic democrat move and make this a class warfare issue, but the cars these people drive are pretty nice. If you ask me, in a down economy, the LAST thing these highly paid people need to be doing is complaining about their contract. They should be thanking their lucky stars that they have such cool things as cradle-to-grave benefits, highest wages among blue-collar workers, etc. And they're one of the few industries in Seattle that hasn't suffered the layoffs (yet) that other businesses here are facing.
And yet, through their selfish actions, the layoffs here are only going to be worse, and the ports may just have to fire some of their sorry union butts after all.
What I can't figure out is, they've been working without a contract for 3 months now... why only recently did they engage in their work slowdown? If I were management and I had a bunch of workers doing a sloppy and slow job, yeah, I'd lock 'em out too. I'd also be doing whatever I could to hire and train replacements, but hey, that's just me.
If you're suggesting that unions prevent abuse of laborers, you might want to read up on labor laws passed in the last century.
Nearly every original purpose of unions, such as child labor, overtime compensation, etc. have all been dealt with by the courts now.
It seems that one of the only purposes of unions anymore is collective bargaining for wages/benefit increases. And I have to ask you... honestly, how do unions make that any better? I'm not in a union and I do pretty good, because if I don't like what one employer pays, I can try somewhere else. It's called competitive forces and it works for employees just as well as businesses.
The labor laws have leveled the playing field in terms of prohibiting certain practices across the board. Name a union lately that has stopped an evil, corrupt business from hiring cute (and dirty) pre-teens from slaving away 14 hours a day for mere pennies? What? The unions don't do that anymore? Hmmm... must be because it's illegal to do so anyway.
I suggest at least finding a better straw-man argument to use when trying to prove how useful unions are.
If you're so good, why are you out of a tech or otherwise job?
With that attitude you couldn't be opposed to foreign Tech. workers here with H1-B visas taking your job for less money either...The difference between you and unions is, though you may not like it, they're organized and know how to protect their own and now you're wishing you were them.
I agree. Both entities are "thugs" when it comes to the issues of national security and well being.
This is one of those situations where a President can act Presidential and do what needs to be done. He will also acquire a group of political enemies whichever way he decides. Comes with the territory.
Hmmm... is it possible-do you think, just maybe-that being out of work doesn't always relate to how "good" you are?
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