EDITORIAL PORT SHUTDOWN BUSH HAS NO CHOICE BUT TO INVOKE TAFT-HARTLEY ACT.

THE shutdown of West Coast seaports over a dispute between the longshoremen's union and shippers represents one of the most pointless and destructive labor actions in years.

President George W. Bush initiated a legally required study of the shutdown's economic impact Monday with the clear intention of invoking the Taft-Hartley Act to force the dock workers to go back to work unloading the roughly 200 cargo-laden ships stuck offshore. He has no alternative considering the enormous economic damage that's being done.

This is not a dispute about wages, since the dock workers make as much as $135,000 a year, but about labor resistance to progress.

This is not a dispute about anyone losing their jobs, since the dock workers are guaranteed job security.

What it is quite simply is a work slowdown initiated in support of contract demands to prevent modern technology from being used to make cargo handling more efficient. In response, shipping companies locked the workers out since productivity had reached such a low point.

We aren't talking here about minimum-wage workers without benefits. We're talking about the nation's highest-paid blue-collar workers with lucrative pension and benefit plans fighting against progress itself.

And the cost to America's struggling economy is about $2 billion a day. Produce is rotting, goods aren't being delivered, layoffs soon will ripple out to numerous other industries.

Bush has no rational choice except to move swiftly to force the dock workers back on the job and to make sure they do a full day's work while pressure is brought to bear to find an equitable solution to the contract issues.