TO DEAL with management-labor troubles in West Coast ports, President Bush turned successfully to the Taft-Hartley Act, in its day the hottest political issue on the domestic agenda.
He was the first president to invoke the law's controversial 80-day cooling-off provision since President Jimmy Carter did so nearly a quarter-century ago. By succeeding on the docks where Mr. Carter failed in the coal mines, he demonstrated that organized labor's animosity toward a bill it hated at its inception is an exercise in futility.
"Slave labor law," cried John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers Union during Taft-Hartley's tumultuous journey through Congress in 1947. "The first real step toward fascism in America," complained Philip Murray of the CIO. "An extremist measure," declared President Harry S. Truman after his veto was overridden by a conservative coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats.
For four consecutive presidential elections (1948, 1952, 1956, 1960) the Democratic National Platform dutifully demanded the complete repeal of Taft-Hartley. Then the party lowered its target to call only for the elimination of Section 14(b), which allowed individual states to adopt so-called right-to-work laws. There was further backtracking as President Lyndon Johnson, in 1964, gave greater priority to Great Society and civil rights legislation.
The labor movement, having cast its lot with the Democrats, went along with the politicians; today, Taft-Hartley is just part of the federal woodwork so far as most citizens, including union members, are concerned.
When Mr. Bush took action in late October to save the American economy from a punishing setback, there was no concerted political outcry. House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt, ever ready to salute organized labor, did lament that Mr. Bush had "turned his back on the collective bargaining process and our nation's workers."
More telling was the comment of California's senior senator, Democrat Dianne Feinstein. "In view of the economic problems resulting from the lockout," she declared, "I do not believe the president had any other choice."
That said, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, with 10,500 members, and the Pacific Maritime Association, representing shipping lines and terminal operators, went back to the negotiating table. Well before the 80-day cooling-off period was due to expire on Dec. 27, they reached a tentative agreement Sunday that is likely to bring peace and stability to the docks.
The case for a settlement was rooted in those "economic problems" cited by Senator Feinstein. Nearly half the nation's international trade moves through ports from Seattle to San Diego. A worker slowdown and a retaliatory management lockout before Mr. Bush took action had already cost billions of dollars. The administration warned that its "ability to prosecute the global war on terrorism" could be undercut if the cooling-off provision did not work. Implicit was a government threat of seizure or compulsory arbitration.
Doubts about Taft-Hartley's workability rested mainly on the mixed record of its 80-day clause. In the 35 times it was invoked, it failed to produce a settlement 10 times -- mostly in disputes involving longshoremen. This time -- for the first time -- the trigger was not a union strike but a management lockout, a precedent that could have caused legal complications.
The issues on the West Coast docks were classic. One was money, as union members demanded higher pay to augment earnings already averaging $100,000 a year. The more crucial question involved advanced technology and its threat to jobs under union jurisdiction. Labor and management were fighting over which side "controlled" port facilities actually paid for by taxpayers.
In the settlement, there was predictable compromise. By accepting technological improvements that in the long run may cost 400 union jobs, the ILWU cashed in on the saving involved by channeling a good chunk of it to its members. And no present workers will join the unemployment lines. Attrition and shifts to other jobs are to do the trick.
As a result, Taft-Hartley is more deeply embedded than ever in the nation's labor law. Fifty-five years ago, the conservatives who devised the legislation contended it was intended to create "balance" in management-labor relations after 12 years of the New Deal's pro-labor Wagner Act.
But what is one man's "balance" is another man's "tilt." American labor unions, much diminished in numbers, have traditionally blamed Taft-Hartley for their problems. Not so, argue many economists. The booming American economy of the past half-century has introduced industrial blue-collar workers to a middle-class way of life that militates against militancy. And as manufacturing jobs have migrated to low-cost-labor countries overseas, this nation's growing service economy has proved resistant to union organizing.
The West Coast docks were an exception to this trend, mainly because a strong ILWU enjoyed a chokehold on international trade in the global economy. That Taft-Hartley could prove effective in such a situation proved its staying power is as strong as ever.
Joseph R.L. Sterne is a former editorial page editor of The Sun.