News and world briefing
Bush halts ports’ lockout of workers
David E. Sanger and Steven
Greenhouse
New York Times
WASHINGTON (U-WIRE) —
President Bush on Tuesday inter
vened in the 11-day shutdown of 29
West Coast ports, successfully seek
ing a court order to halt the employ
ers’ lockout of 10,500 longshore
men because the operation of the
ports is “vital to our economy and
to our military7."
Judge William Aisup of U.S. Dis
trict Court in San Francisco issued
a temporary injunction Tuesday
night ordering longshoremen to re
port to work immediately.
In seeking to suspend the shut
down for 80 days, Bush became
the first president to invoke the
Taft-Hartley Act’s emergency pro
visions since President Nixon
sought to stop a longshoremen's
strike in 1971.
Aisup said he would conduct a
hearing in a week on whether to
grant a full 80-day injunction. If he
grants it, the labor dispute would be
pushed past the Nov. 5 election,
past the Christmas buying season,
and perhaps past the start of mili
tary action against Iraq.
Bush said he was worried about
the movement of military supplies.
The Pentagon often uses commer
cial shipping lines to send supplies
and equipment overseas.
The president sought the court
order after Labor Secretary Elaine
Chao was unable to negotiate a 30
dav contract extension to reopen
the ports. The International Long
shore and Warehouse Union
agreed to a 30-day extension, but
the employers’ group acknowl
edged it had rejected an extension,
saving it feared that the longshore
men would engage in a renewed
work slowdown.
Bush’s aides said he was reluc
tant to act, but feared that a con
tinuation of the lockout would un
dermine a sputtering economic
recovery.
“This dispute between manage-1
ment and labor cannot be allowed
to further harm the economy and
force thousands of working Ameri
cans from their jobs,” Bush said in a
hastily-called announcement to re
porters in the Rose Garden.
On Sept. 29, the Pacific Maritime
Association, a group of port opera
tors and shipping lines, shut the
ports and locked out the longshore
men, accusing the workers of engag
ing in a job slowdown. Union offi
cials said the workers were merely
observing safety precautions be
cause five longshoremen died on
the job this year.
For the White House, Tuesdays
decision was a difficult political cal
culation. With union leaders op
posed to a cooling-off period, some
of Bushs political advisers feared
that the move might mobilize union
members against Republican candi
dates, less than a month from mid
term elections. Several unions that
Bush has courted say that such in
junctions undercut labor’s power in
contract disputes.
“We’re extremely disappointed,”
said Bret Caldwell, spokesman for
the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters, the union wooed most
vigorously by Bush. “The whole
strategy of locking out the workers
and urging the president to invoke
Taft-Hartley was clearly an employ
er strategy to get around negotiating
a contract with these workers. It’s a
bad precedent. It gives management
the upper hand.”
But some White House officials
said that labor itself was divided on
how to deal with the issue. “With
every passing day, as the harm to
the economy increased, the presi
dent leaned more and more in this
direction,” one senior administra
tion official said. “It buys some
time, it gets us past Christmas.”
Moreover, there is a chance Bush
may reap some political benefit.
Many business groups lobbied for
the president to seek an injunction,
and they have sounded the alarm
about the shutdown’s potential to
damage the economy.
Tracv Mullin, president of the
National Retail Federation, said,
“The president has shown political
courage and leadership. He has
put national security and the
economy first.”
Bush’s announcement came just
one day after he appointed a
board of inquiry, led by former La
bor Secretary Bill Brock, to report
to him about the damage caused
by a shutdown of ports that han
dle $300 billion in cargo each
year. Administration officials said
it was important for the president
to move quickly to prevent further
economic damage — they cited
economists who say the port shut
down is costing the economy $1
billion to $2 billion a day.
Administration, management
and union officials said Eugene
Sealia, the Labor Department’s so
licitor, contacted the heads of the
union and the Pacific Maritime As
sociation, the port operators’
group, on Tuesday morning to pro
pose a 30-day extension. Several
union leaders praised that ap
proach because it showed the ad
ministration was seeking to heed
union concerns and avoid invoking
Taft-Hartley.
Sniper has
Blaine Harden
New York Times
SILVER SPRING, Md. (U-WIRE)
— For seven strange days, each
more jittery than the last, a macabre
lottery has been playing in Washing
ton and its well-groomed suburbs.
It affords everyone who dares leave
the house a chance — an infinitesi
mal chance, but a chance — of being
murdered by an excellent marksman.
“You don’t even have to play to
lose,” said Byrne Peake, 42, a build
ing contractor here in Silver
Spring, where last week a nanny
was shot in the head while sitting
on a park bench. “All you have to
do is have a pulse.”
And yet — with six dead, two seri
ously wounded, including a 13-year
old boy shot on Monday on his way
to school, and the sniper still out
there somewhere — the quotidian
pulse of suburban life thumps on.
The Beltway, which slices
through neighborhoods where sev
en of the shootings occurred, re
mains jammed and manic. School
attendance has not swooned, al
though children sit in classrooms
behind drawn shades, recess has
been put on indefinite hold and po
lice officers with rifles patrol
schoolyard perimeters.
People here are carefully carrying
on with the tasks that keep them
alive — and make them targets.
“If you let this sniper run your life,
you may as well hide in the back hall
closet,” said Peake, who was out this
crisp autumn afternoon at Sligo
Greek Golf Course. The course lies
10 minutes from the Kensington
Shell Station, where last Thursday a
woman was killed while vacuuming
her minivan,
While Peake was willing to play
golf on a thickly wooded course
where he conceded he was fair game
for a sniper, he has reined in his fam
ily. His 3-year-old daughter is not al
lowed out of doors.
This combination of annoyed
bravura and calibrated retreat has
begun to define the daily lives of res
idents of Montgomery County. Be
fore five people were shot to death
here in the past week, this sprawling
suburb of Washington was known
primarily for the extraordinarily
high percentage of its residents who
are well-off, well-educated and live in
big houses.
Now it is a place where going to
school requires tactical planning.
Nicholas Shann, 11, is a sixth
grader at Julius West Middle School
in Rockville, Md., about five miles
from where a man was shot to death
last Thursday while mowing a lawn.
Nicholas lives three blocks from
the school and normally walks
home by himself. But his mother,
Allegra Shann, an interior decora
tor, has canceled those walks for
the foreseeable future.
As has been the case since late last
week, the shades at his school were
drawn shut Tuesday, the doors were
locked, all physical education class
were confined to the gym and no one
was allowed to go outside until bus
es and parents showed up to take
children home. All after-school ac
tivities were canceled.
Teachers and students agreed that
was it hard to concentrate in class
on Tuesday. An unusually high per
centage of the students who did
show up Tuesday, Green said, ask to
see the school nurse. They com
plained of stomachaches and several
demanded that they be taken home,
she said.
“I had a dream last night that the
shooter guy was in my school,” said
Monica Kellem, 12, a seventh-grad
er from Rockville, before jumping
on a bus home Tuesday afternoon.
“Now, I am going home and I am
staying home.”
In nearby Kensington, Margaret
Upton, 36, was asked by a reporter
outside a children’s library if she
would talk about the shooting.
“Not out here,” she said, as she
pulled her baby from the back seat
and grabbed her older son by the
hand. “But after we get inside, I’d be
happy to.”
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