[Original link at http://www.nathannewman.org/log/archives/000425.shtml#000425]
Bush is officially seeking a Taft-Hartley injunction </a>in the dockworker lockout. See http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?PACKAGEID=BIZlabor1&SLUG=PORT%2dLABOR
Here are some actions you can take in support of the dockworkers: **Go to http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/ilwu2/bksb2zkwt to send a message to retailers who have promoted the injunction ** See ILWU's http://www.ilwu.org for their activist toolkit of sample support letters and resolutions.
To understand why issuing an injunction will be seen as an act of war by unions, you might want to read this recent law journal article about the historic of role of injunctions in crippling the union movement. Read Death by Legal Injunction at http://www.nathannewman.org/log/Injunction.html, co-written by law professor Michael LeRoy quoted in the article above.
Below is an excerpt from LeRoy's article about how the Supreme Court has distorted the meaning of "health and safety" in the law to allow injunctions where they were never intended:
"In advocating injunctions of national emergency strikes, Senator Taft made clear that a strike must not only affect a substantial part of "an entire industry," but also it must "imperil the national health or safety, a condition which, it is anticipated, will not often occur." In several strikes, however, the Supreme Court expanded the meaning of "national health or safety" to mean national inconvenience.
This debate on definitions was at the heart of the steelworkers' strike in United Steelworkers of America v. United States. Their work stoppage began on July 15, 1959, and continued until an injunction was issued on October 20. On October 9, the President ordered formation of a board of inquiry, and ten days later the Board issued a report upon which the Attorney General relied in seeking a strike injunction.
The issue before the Court was whether the strike imperiled the nation's health or safety. The government contended that the term "comprehends the country's general well-being, its economic health." The Steelworkers countered that the term meant "the physical health of the citizenry." Relying on the board of inquiry's findings that the strike affected national defense, the district court issued its injunction. In a per curium ruling, the Supreme Court accepted the Government's interpretation with little explanation...
[In dissent, Justice] Douglas saw classic symptoms of the old labor injunction lurking in the district court's order. [See here for the (see the decision and dissent at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=361 &page=49#f) By exceeding its lawful scope, this injunction unfairly curbed the economic rights of union workers.
Douglas- "Labor injunctions were long used as cudgels--so broad in scope, so indiscriminate in application as once to be dubbed a scarecrow device for curbing the economic pressure of the strike [citation omitted]....The same indiscriminate leveling of those within and those without the law is present....It is not confined to the precise evil at which the present Act is aimed. Like the old labor injunctions that brought discredit to the federal judiciary this is a blanket injunction broad and all-inclusive, bringing within its scope men whose work has nothing whatsoever to do with the defense needs of the Nation."
In relating this injunction to the judiciary's blemished history, Douglas found that this injunction was also wrong because it interfered with free collective bargaining to the disadvantage of labor.
Douglas- "Aside from the resemblance of this district court and its injunction to an unsavory past, Douglas also believed that the restraining order misconceived congressional intent on national safety and health. "This seems to me to be an assumption that is unwarranted. I think that Congress, when it used the words 'national health,' was safeguarding the heating of homes, the delivery of milk, the protection of hospitals, and the like."