All in time
Bush fires a Taft-Hartley bunker-buster for union-busters out west

So why can't the two sides even sit down at the table together?

The ILWU charges that the reason is much broader: that after decades of having to honor hard-fought union victories, the PMA is out to break the union. Further, union leaders and members have every belief that the Bush Administration intends to help -- in fact, has already done so by invokation of the Taft-Hartley Act, organized labor's single most loathed law.

"The problem isn't the beginning of Taft-Hartley," says Vance Lelli, a spokesman for ILWU Local 23 and president of the Pierce County (Tacoma, Wash.) Central Labor Council. "It's what [the Bush Administration] can invoke at the end of it -- the forced contracts, the concessions." [read more]