President George W. Bush secured a court order Oct. 8 ordering the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) to temporarily end its lockout of 10,500 dockworkers at 29 West Coast ports and ordering work to resume without a contract. Dockworkers are expected to resume work the afternoon of Oct. 9.
Just hours before U.S. District Judge William H. Alsup in San Francisco acted, Bush directed the U.S. Department of Justice to seek a federal court order under the Taft-Hartley Act to intervene in the lockout. Judge Alsup’s temporary restraining order opens the ports and instructs both sides to return to court Oct. 16, when he will consider imposing an 80-day “cooling off” period during which time the ports would remain open.
On Oct. 8, the Bush Administration asked both parties to agree to a 30-day cooling-off period. The union agreed but the PMA turned down the request, in favor of the harsher Taft-Hartley injunction, just before Bush made his announcement.
“This is the first time in the history of the United States that a president has let an employer lock out workers in an extended quest to undermine the workers’ union—creating a phony crisis—and then reward that employer’s action with government intervention,” said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka. “It is a tragedy with historic ramifications.”
The PMA indefinitely locked out the dockworkers, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), on Sept. 29. They had continued to work since their contract expired July 1.
Talks between PMA and the union broke down Sunday night when the PMA also refused federal mediators’ suggestion, accepted by the union, that the dockworkers work under their expired contract for seven days, to be renewed on a rolling basis as mediation continued. The following day, Bush officially named a federal board of inquiry to look into the injunction. “The parties had only been in mediation four days,” said Trumka, “not enough time for this process to succeed.”
While the PMA was brushing off the federal mediators Sunday night, the three members of Bush’s inquiry board—headed by former secretary of labor and former Tennessee U.S. Sen. Bill Brock (R)—already had arrived in the port areas.
"The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) members have wanted to work all along,” said Trumka. “Early in the process, the Bush Administration threatened to use the military to operate the ports and threatened to invoke Taft-Hartley—thus strengthening the employers’ hand in bargaining and giving the Pacific Maritime Association little incentive to bargain in good faith.”
Read Oct. 7 coverage of the ILWU lockout.
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