Legal efforts to curb the power of unions stretching back to Taft-Hartley have weakened and corporatized organized labor.

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This was, he argued, the first time Taft-Hartley had been used when management was locking out workers from the ports.

ECONOMIST: The president and the dockers

CIO, America's main union federation, was outraged at the use of Taft-Hartley.

ECONOMIST: The president and the dockers

Unions may even try for the repeal of provision 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which allows states to pass right-to-work laws that ban forced unionization.

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The U.S. and the world went into a deep recession in the early 1930s, but it took the protectionist Taft-Hartley bill to stretch it out into a prolonged depression.

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Anyway, Taft-Hartley may not actually solve the port problem.

ECONOMIST: The president and the dockers

And the history of Taft-Hartley is not promising.

ECONOMIST: The president and the dockers

The 10, 500 longshoremen who control the west coast ports, furious about the Taft-Hartley decision, are now all the more determined to hold out for union control over jobs created by new technology at the ports (a key issue in the dispute).

ECONOMIST: The president and the dockers

If President Obama is serious about protecting critical infrastructure, fostering a climate that is conducive to international trade and investment, and cultivating the conditions for economic growth, he should invoke the powers afforded him under the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 to bar a strike by the longshoremen.

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