The legislation represents another attack on workers’ rights at a time when the White House has intervened on the side of the shipping bosses and against 10,500 West Coast dockworkers by imposing the antilabor Taft-Hartley law.

The Senate bill would require every seaport to create a "security committee" involving federal, state, local police agencies as well as "private law enforcement agencies," the Los Angeles Times reported. The measure will go before the full Senate and the House of Representatives for a vote later this fall.

Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ernest Hollings declared that "the bill’s need was underscored by the recent terrorist attack on a French oil tanker near a Yemeni port and the economic effect of a labor dispute at West Coast ports," according to the Times.

Some unionists, however, are concerned that the bill will be used to increase police intimidation and harassment of unionists.

President George Bush imposed the Taft-Hartley law October 8, after a 10-day lockout forced on the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) by the shipping and port terminal bosses. On October 16, U.S. District Judge William Alsup officially approved the 80-day "cooling off period" mandated under the Taft-Hartley law.

Under the Taft-Hartley injunction, the terms of the previous labor pact are reinstated. The government injunction requires the union and Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) to hold contract talks with federal mediators over the next 60 days.

The federal judge prohibited the union from striking during the 80-day period, which ends December 26, and has broad discretion to impose penalties against the union, such as fines and imprisonment. The injunction requires the ILWU members to work "at a normal and reasonable rate of speed."

The PMA is pressing the Justice Department to use "information" supplied by the shipping employers to force the dockworkers to pick up the pace or face penalties.

"We believe we have accumulated enough information to present a factual case to the Justice Department," said PMA President Joseph Miniace October 16. He said the shipping and terminal employers have documented a "totally intolerable" 22 percent drop in productivity since the dockworkers returned to their jobs.

In response to the PMA’s charges of worker-orchestrated slowdowns, the union has filed 13 separate charges with the Labor Relations Committee saying that the shipping bosses were acting in bad faith to discredit the union.

The shipping bosses are seeking other ways to deepen government intervention against the unions. They are lobbying U.S. transportation secretary Norman Mineta to pass legislation similar to the Railway Labor Act that would apply to workers on the docks. The Railway Labor Act has been used to tie up the rail unions in miles of red tape, including government mediation and arbitration boards, to try to make it more difficult for rail workers to wage strikes.  
 
 
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