SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The collapse of talks aimed at reopening U.S. West Coast ports is likely to spur President Bush to seek an order sending union workers back to the docks, ending a lockout that has already caused billions of dollars in damage to the U.S. economy, a federal mediator and port employers said.þþWest Coast ports from San Diego to Seattle remained under a management lockout on Monday, escalating a crisis that has cut off much of the nation's trade for more than a week.þþ``This is the federal government and I suspect they will act when they deem necessary, but now that the negotiations have broken down, there's no reason for them not to act,'' said Joseph Miniace, president of the Pacific Maritime Association, representing shippers and terminal operators at the 29 West Coast ports.þþMiniace said the PMA had been informed that a federal fact finding panel to gathering evidence on Monday, a necessary step before the White House could invoke the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, a move he said would be ``imminent.''þþBut he said that even while such an order could be issued in several days or less, it could still take seven weeks to clear the backlog of billions of dollars worth of cargo stranded by the lockout, now it its eighth consecutive day.þþ``It's going to take us six to seven weeks to dig out from this,'' Miniace said.þþPeter Hurtgen, the federal mediator responsible for ending the bitter dispute between the two sides, also said he believed Bush was likely to invoke the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to put the ports back in business.þþThe 1947 law, last invoked by President Jimmy Carter in a bid to end a coal strike in 1978, empowers presidents to determine whether a strike or lockout poses a national emergency.þþThe White House has so far declined to say whether it would seek an order to put the 10,500 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) back on the docks, which port employers locked indefinitely on Sept. 29. þþNO CLEAR WAY FORWARDþþILWU President James Spinosa, who had led union negotiators in an effort to keep union control over the introduction of new technology and new jobs on the docks, said Sunday's breakdown in talks had left both sides with no clear way forward.þþ``We're back to the drawing board,'' he said.þþThe two sides had been in federally-mediated talksþþsince Thursday as fears deepened that the lockout of ports handling $300 billion in trade annually could play havoc with the faltering U.S. economy.þþThe PMA ordered the lockout on Sept. 29 after accusing the union of staging illegal work slowdowns as contract talks bogged down.þþThe PMA itself has estimated that the lockout is costing the U.S. economy $1 billion per day, sending economic fears rippling across the United States and as far afield as Asia as vital transpacific sea links slow to a halt.þþThe two sides are divided by management plans to implement basic technologies such as bar code readers to make the ports more efficient. The union contends those upgrades could mean lost jobs and wants union membership for any new jobs created by the automation.þþThe union's last collective bargaining agreement expired on July 1, and union leaders decided last month not to extend the contract terms on the day-by-day basis which had kept the ports functioning for most of the summer.þþOn Sunday, after some 14 hours of negotiations, the talks to cement a new deal fell apart.þþPMA officials said they had asked the union to extend the existing contract terms for some 90 days while weighing a new contract offer that included job guarantees and an additional $1 billion for the union pension fund.þþThey said that the union made a counter-offer of a seven day contract extension -- but then demanded as a prerequisite that the PMA take the technology issue off the table, which it was unwilling to do.þþ``That was a total surprise. Technology is our number one issue,'' Miniace said.þþWith almost 200 ships carrying food, manufacturing equipment and retail goods sitting idle off the West Coast, the port impasse has already created economic problems for factories, farmers, truckers and retailers, and economic analysts say those problems are likely to worsen sharply if the closure continues for much longer. þþþ
Source: NY Times
