WASHINGTON (AP) — Some manufacturers and retailers are urging President Joe Biden to invoke a 1947 law to suspend a strike by 45,000 longshoremen that has closed 36 U.S. ports from Maine to Texas.
At issue is Section 206 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act. The law authorizes a president to seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period for companies and unions to try to resolve their differences.
However, Biden has said he will not intervene in the strike.
Taft-Hartley was intended to limit the power of unions
The law was introduced by two Republicans — Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio and Rep. Fred Hartley Jr. of New Jersey — after World War II. This was followed by a series of strikes in 1945 and 1946 by workers demanding better wages and working conditions after the privations of the war.
President Harry Truman opposed Taft-Hartley, but his veto was overridden by Congress.
In addition to allowing a president to intervene in strikes, the law banned “closed deals,” which require employers to hire only unionized workers. The ban allowed workers to refuse to join a union.
Taft-Hartley also banned “secondary boycotts,” making it illegal for unions to pressure neutral companies to stop doing business with an employer affected by a strike.
In addition, union leaders were required to sign affidavits declaring that they did not support the Communist Party.
Presidents can seek a strike that could “jeopardize national health and security.”
The president can appoint an investigative committee to examine and report on the labor dispute – and then direct the attorney general to ask a federal court to suspend a workers’ strike or a management lockout.
If the court issues an injunction, an 80-day cooling-off period begins. During this period, management and unions must “make every effort to resolve and resolve their differences.”
Still, the law cannot actually force union members to accept a contract offer.
Presidents have invoked Taft-Hartley 37 times in labor disputes
According to the Congressional Research Service, the parties have resolved their differences in about half of the cases in which presidents have invoked Section 206 of the Taft-Hartley Act. But workers went on strike nine times, according to the research service.
President George W. Bush invoked Taft-Hartley in 2002 after 29 West Coast ports locked out members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in a standoff. (In the end, both sides agreed to a contract.)
Biden has said he will not employ Taft-Hartley to intervene
Despite lobbying by the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation, the president insisted he had no plans to suspend the longshoremen’s strike against ports on the East and Gulf Coasts.
On Wednesday, before leaving Joint Base Andrews for a plane tour of North Carolina to view the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, Biden said the port strike was hampering efforts to deliver emergency supplies to the relief effort.
“This natural disaster is incredibly consequential,” the president said. “The last thing we need beyond that is a man-made disaster – what’s happening at the ports.”
Biden noted that the companies that control East and Gulf Coast ports have made huge profits since the pandemic.
“It’s time for them to sit down and do this strike,” he said.
Although many ports are publicly owned, private companies often operate cargo loading and unloading operations.
William Brucher, a labor relations expert at Rutgers University, notes that Taft-Hartley orders are “widely, if not universally, despised by unions in the United States.”
And Vice President Kamala Harris is relying on the support of organized labor in her presidential campaign against Donald Trump.
If the longshore workers’ strike drags on long enough and leads to shortages that anger American consumers, pressure could grow on Biden to change course and intervene. But experts like Brucher point out that most voters have already made up their minds and that the outcome of the election is “now really more about voter turnout.”
That means, Brucher said, that “Democrats really can’t afford to alienate organized labor.”
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AP writer Colleen Long from Joint Base Andrews and AP business writers Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.
