RESEARCH Business Labor

LABOR RELATIONS
Taft-Hartley Act often fails to resolve disputes, labor-law expert says

Mark Reutter, Business Editor
(217) 333-0568; mreutter@uiuc.edu

11/1/02

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — If you think the port dispute that snarled shipping at 29 ports on the West Coast last month is over, think again.

The Taft-Hartley Act, which President Bush invoked Oct. 8 to open the docks following an
11-day lockout of workers by port operators, is not "the panacea most people think it is" for resolving sticky labor disputes, said Michael H. LeRoy, a labor-law expert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The law does not hold a magic formula for resolving labor disputes, but rather requires an 80-day cooling-off period, at which time a strike (by employees) or lockout (by management) can happen again.

Research by LeRoy has found that since the law’s passage in 1947, fully 30 percent of Taft-Hartley injunctions do not result in a settlement during the cooling-off period. In eight of 11 times when the act was invoked in cases involving dock workers, the dispute re-emerged after 80 days.

History shows that Taft-Hartley is invoked by the White House as a "political expedient" to stave off public alarm over a work stoppage. In last month’s dispute between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWA) and the Pacific Maritime Association, Bush declared that the port shutdown imperiled "national health or safety."

Under the law, the president can appoint a fact-finding board and petition the federal courts to order the facilities reopened. If the dispute is not resolved following federal mediation, the employer’s last offer is submitted to employees in a secret ballot. If the matter is still not settled, a shutdown can resume or Congress can impose a legislative end to the conflict.

By invoking Taft-Hartley last month, Bush pushed any future port shutdown until after the November elections.
According to LeRoy’s research, Taft-Hartley was passed explicitly by Congress in 1947 to curb the allegedly excessive power of labor unions in the wake of New Deal legislation. Not only are the standards for the president to intervene "vague," but a Taft-Hartley injunction tends to "aggravate rather than to resolve" labor disputes.

It is still unclear whether the stoppage at the West Coast ports could have been resolved between labor and management within days, or even hours, of Bush’s intervention. The major issue involves not wages, but the use of new technology and non-union positions on the docks.

All too often in the past, LeRoy wrote in a 2001 article, Taft-Hartley has been used to favor management over labor and has resulted in weakening the power of the union involved.

His 2001 article in the Arizona Law Review, co-written by John H. Johnson, is titled "Death by Lethal Injunction: National Emergency Strikes Under the Taft-Hartley Act and the Moribund Right to Strike."