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Judge orders West Coast ports to stay open

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- A back-to-work order covering the busy seaports on the West Coast was extended Wednesday to the full 80 days called for under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act by a federal judge who agreed with the Bush administration that work stoppages were harmful to the United States' economy.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted the government's request for an injunction that prohibits strikes or lockouts during a cooling-off period while representatives of the shipping industry and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union try to come to an agreement on a new three-year contract.

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President Bush invoked the Taft-Hartley Act on Oct. 8 in order to end the management lockout.

In a 16-page written decision, Alsup said the government had presented ample evidence that a 10-day lockout ordered by the Pacific Maritime Association had caused major problems for key industries such as transportation and agriculture, and had also potentially interfered with the shipment of supplies to U.S. military units overseas "at a time when our nation is at war with international terrorists and our national defense system must be fully prepared."

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Although the longshoremen and management had agreed to continue handling military cargo during the lockout, government attorneys had pointed out that in many instances, military supplies are shipped in cargo containers aboard civilian merchant vessels that are not specially marked.

Alsup's 16-page decision carried a stern warning to the ILWU not to stage any work slowdowns as a means of pressing their contract demands. Both sides have had their own unique version of the alleged slowdown: the ILWU has said that their workers cannot get to the massive backlog of cargo quickly and the PMA has accused them of continuing a work slowdown.

"Although the massive gridlock at West Coast ports is primarily attributable to the PMA's lockout...concerted slowdowns by longshore workers would greatly exacerbate an existing national emergency," Alsup stated. "Therefore, there is sufficient basis to extend the injunction to prohibit both lockouts and strikes at this juncture."

Slowdowns in which longshoremen work at a deliberate snail's pace are considered strikes under the order. The PMA said when it ordered its lockout in late September that a slowdown by ILWU had thrown their schedules into disarray to the point that the situation amounted to "a strike with pay."

Union officials have since predicted that the PMA would accuse their members of slowing down as they struggled to clear the 10-day backlog of ships and cargo from bustling ports such as Los Angeles-Long Beach, Oakland, Portland and Seattle. The union has stated that the PMA has not been hiring full crews of workers; the longshoremen have also refused to work at a pace that creates safety hazards.

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"The PMA is saying that we are causing slowdowns because productivity is down by 20 to 25 percent," ILWU President James Spinosa said recently. "I think we must be doing pretty well if that's all we're down given the disaster the employers' lockout created."

The ILWU has criticized Bush's invocation of the Taft-Hartley Act as alleged collusion between the PMA and the business-friendly White House aimed at weakening the union.

Alsup rejected the contention as speculation, and also said there was insufficient evidence to support the union's claim that the lockout had been on the verge of collapsing when the White House stepped in.

"Estimating when a voluntary end to the shutdown might have come would have been guesswork," he said.

(Reported by Hil Anderson in Los Angeles)

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