Judge orders West Coast ports reopened

SAN FRANCISCO -- Faced with a judge's order to reopen West Coast ports, longshoremen and shipping companies now confront the mammoth task of heaving billions of dollars worth of idle cargo -- from auto parts to bananas -- back into the nation's economy.\nSigns suggest the transition back to work won't be smooth.\nWorkers may need as long as two and a half months to clear the backlog of goods caused by the 10-day lockout at 29 major Pacific ports. The labor dispute prompted President Bush to intervene Tuesday and may have cost the fragile U.S. economy up to $2 billion a day.\nThe Pacific Maritime Association, which represents shipping companies and terminal operators, said it would order workers to report to shifts that start at 6 p.m. Wednesday in most ports.\nThe announcement came hours after Bush became the first president in a quarter-century to use the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which allows a president to ask a federal court with jurisdiction over the dispute to stop a strike or lockout.\nJudge William Alsup then issued a temporary restraining order that expires Oct. 16. Lawyers for both sides said they expect Alsup to impose the 80-day cooling-off period as mandated by Taft-Hartley at that time.\nA court-ordered truce would keep ports open during the crucial Christmas season, when retailers rely on imported goods to stock their shelves.\n"This nation simply cannot afford to have hundreds of billions of dollars a year in potential manufacturing and agricultural trade sitting idle," Bush said. "We can't afford it."\nOn Wednesday, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the two sides cannot count on Bush to settle their dispute.\n"Nobody should be under any illusions that at the end of 80 days the federal government will step in and solve the problem," Fleischer said. "This is a worker-management dispute at a very fundamental level."\nWest Coast ports were closed late last month amid a bitter contract dispute that centers on the implementation of waterfront technology that unionized dock workers believe would cause job losses. Since then, about 200 ships laden with tons of cargo have backed up at docks or at anchor - unloading them is a mammoth logistical task for dockworkers and their employers.\nThe judge's order required longshoremen to resume work "at a normal pace," a phrase that is sure to be contentious in coming days.\nWorking too fast could compromise safety on congested docks, and that's not something dockworkers are willing to do, union officials said. As a result, they said Tuesday they expect the association will wield Alsup's order as a stick to whack workers with charges that they are not meeting previous productivity levels.\n"You can start writing the stories today about the PMA accusing us of slowdowns," International Longshore and Warehouse Union spokesman Steve Stallone said. "There's no way in hell we can reach those documented productivity levels."\nEven if all goes well, it will likely take 8 to 10 weeks to clear the backlog caused by the port shutdown, association president Joseph Miniace estimated. He said ships carrying food and other perishables will be unloaded first.\nPacific Maritime Association officials applauded Bush's move. "I believe he acted in the best interests of the country, the economy and our national security," Miniace said.\nLabor leaders, however, criticized the president's decision. Organized labor considers Taft-Hartley an anti-union mechanism for resolving disputes.\n"No president has ever been on this side of management this overtly," said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO.\nThe last time a president sought to intervene under Taft-Hartley was in 1978, when a court refused President Carter's request for an 80-day cooling-off period in a coal miner's strike, but ordered miners back to work under a temporary restraining order.\nThe ports, which handle more than $300 billion in trade annually, account for more than half of all containerized cargo moving in and out of the country. A study prepared for the shippers' association by Martin Associates of Lancaster, Pa., estimated the cost of a 10-day work stoppage at $19 billion.\nThe lockout forced automakers to charter expensive cargo planes to airlift parts to stalled assembly lines and left millions of dollars worth of U.S. crops, meat and poultry in danger of spoiling on the docks.\nShipping lines imposed the lockout after contract talks with the 10,500-member union broke down last month over modernizing the ports.\nThe union says new technology will cost its members some jobs now, and wants new positions created by the technology to be union-covered. The shippers say the union shouldn't dictate who controls the jobs.\nExperts warned that progress at the bargaining table may be even harder now since workers from one of the nation's most militant unions have been forced back to work.\n"It intervenes to the point of aggravating a union, but has no end game," said Michael LeRoy, professor of labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois. "It's just a delay game"