Catherwood LibraryILR School

With the economy losing $1 billion a day, and likely to start losing as much as twice that daily, President Bush has given a an economic-impact inquiry panel only one day to report on the negative impact of a nine-day old lockout in negotiations between West Coast shipping companies and dockworkers (see yesterday?s WIT). Although presidents have only rarely made use of the back-to-work orders that such panels clear the way for, all eleven of the coast-wide strikes that have occurred since the Taft-Hartley Act established this power, have resulted in such orders. The usefulness of such an order in this first case of a port lockout leading to a presidential invocation of Taft-Hartley Act is highly debatable, however, as the work stoppages resumed in eight of the eleven previous cases in which a back-to-work order was issued.