Labor groups reacted to Senator Gardner’s PORTS legislation, which would expand the Taft-Hartley Act.
A proposal to expand the Taft-Hartley Act for use in port labor disputes was attacked by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union spokesman as “outrageous, extremist, anti-worker.”
Worker slowdowns during the lengthy and contentious negotiations in late 2014 and earlier this year between the ILWU and the Pacific Maritime Association were viewed by many as one of the leading causes for congestion that crippled West Coast ports and caused dozens of ships to anchor at while waiting for berths.
Senator Cory Gardner, R-Colo., introduced last week the Protecting Orderly and Responsible Transit of Shipments (PORTS) Act is to “safeguard the American economy from the threat of labor shutdowns and slowdowns at seaports.”
The act, which is cosponsored by Senator Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., would “discourage disruptions at U.S. seaports and incentivize speedy resolution of disputes by strengthening and expanding” Taft-Hartley.
“It would do this by granting state governors Taft Hartley powers currently reserved for the president, including the ability to convene a board of inquiry and start the Taft Hartley process whenever a port labor dispute is causing economic harm,” said Gardner. “Once that board reports, governors could petition federal courts to enjoin slowdowns, strikes, or lockouts at ports in their states. The PORTS Act would explicitly include slowdowns as a trigger for Taft Hartley powers.”
The PORTS bill was also criticized by Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO, who said it was “a blatant overreach by corporate interests whose sole objective is to eviscerate the collective bargaining rights of port employees,” and that the “Gardner bill would also have a severe chilling effect on labor-management relations in our nation’s ports by tilting the playing field in management’s favor.”
“The PORTS bill usurps the power of the President of the United States,” added Wytkind. “With the expert assistance of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services (FMCS), the President is in the best position to evaluate and understand complex, multi-state bargaining, and to provide leadership in helping both parties reach agreements consensually.”
A group of 118 organizations including the National Retail Federation, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Agriculture Transportation Coalition sent a letter to Gardner supporting his bill.
“We believe this approach correctly reforms the Taft-Hartley process to promote government action in response to the great harm these disputes cause our national economy. Most importantly, the bill clearly defines and expands situations in which Taft-Hartley can be invoked, preventing legal ambiguity from causing inaction,” they wrote, adding, “U.S. ports are essential to the economy and provide the gateway for imports and exports. Our ports should not serve as a barrier to trade, preventing companies from reaching foreign consumers.”
Michael LeRoy, a professor at the School of Labor & Employment Relations & College of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said Gardner’s bill has “a novel framework. It seems to borrow from a growing Republican meme to de-nationalize labor law, and subject it to local regulation.”
LeRoy, who has written extensively about the past use of Taft-Hartley, said the bill “will attract support because the impact of the latest bargaining impasse contributed to a contraction in the nation’s GDP. That gives legitimacy to a very flawed public policy proposal.”
“This policy is well-intentioned but highly flawed,” according to LeRoy. “Its aim is to involve courts much more often, and also sooner, in port labor disputes.
“On the surface, this is a good thought until one considers how the law would be enforced. There would be more injunctions, likely followed by open resistance from militant workers, and then resulting in contempt orders that jail union leaders. America had that experience from the 1880s through the 1930s. After violent labor disputes too numerous to count, Congress enacted the NLRA to curb this unruly and unregulated approach to labor relations. Now, with this legislation, we’re moving back to the infamous ‘labor injunction’ — a period of court administration of labor disputes.
“A better approach is to reclassify docks under the Railway Labor Act,” said LeRoy. “Like passenger aviation and railroads, ports are a chokepoint in the nation’s economy, where the externalities of a labor dispute are too widely distributed and costly. The RLA has long and tedious mediation processes—much better suited for dealing with the real problems posed in the last two West Coast negotiations.
“Another thought is to take away strikes and lockouts, and substitute binding arbitration. East coast and industrialized world ports could serve as comparators. Labor and management would resist this idea—and that in itself makes the idea worth exploring,” he added. “It works for Major League Baseball players—why not, then, for dock workers?”
Port labor dispute bill attacked as ‘outrageous, extremist, anti-worker’
