Marathon Pundit: Monday NLRB overreach roundup

Monday, May 16, 2011

Monday NLRB overreach roundup

Gingrich and Marathon Pundit,
February, 2011.

Another day, another opportunity to slam the radical NLRB.

From AP:

Former U.S. House Speaker and Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is calling on Congress to defund the National Labor Relations Board if it continues to pursue a complaint against Boeing Co.

Gingrich's remarks at a conference Friday in Washington came a day after he formally entered the 2012 GOP presidential race.

The complaint says Boeing illegally retaliated for a 2008 strike by adding a non-union assembly line in South Carolina for 787 passenger jets. Most of that work is now done in Washington state by union workers.

The Chicago Tribune:

[Washington] state offered tax incentives and a hospitable commercial environment. But a Boeing executive said at the time: "The overriding factor was not the business climate. And it was not the wages we're paying today. It was that we cannot afford to have a work stoppage, you know, every three years."

That may strike you as a blinding flash of the obvious — not to mention a choice fully within the discretion of any company functioning in a competitive marketplace, which penalizes idleness. But apparently not.

Last month, the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency, filed a complaint arguing that Boeing broke the law by taking account of possible strikes in making its decision. This, it said, amounted to illegal retaliation against the machinists union.

The Wall Street Journal:

Congressional Republicans are demanding the National Labor Relations Board produce a raft of documents concerning the board's complaint against Boeing Co. and other decisions the lawmakers say overstep the board's authority.

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), along with several Republicans on the committee, wrote to NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon to demand documents linked to the Boeing complaint and union election laws in Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah.

The NLRB's Boeing complaint seeks to force the company to move its newly built production line in South Carolina to Washington state, a remedy pushed by union members who alleged Boeing built the nonunion plant in South Carolina in retaliation for their past strikes.

An NLRB suit against Arizona challenges the legality of a state constitutional amendment that requires secret-ballot elections before a company can be unionized, and claims the state can’t override a federal law that gives workers the option of the so-called card-check method of organizing, which unions prefer because of its ease. The NLRB has said it plans to file a similar suit against South Dakota, and has investigated union election laws elsewhere.

The Washington Examiner:

America has a 9 percent national unemployment rate. Americans' top concerns are jobs, jobs and jobs. So it strains belief that the unconfirmed acting general counsel of an obscure regulatory agency wants to stop Boeing Co. from using its newly built aircraft manufacturing plant in South Carolina.

But it's happening.

The National Labor Relations Board's main mission is to settle disputes between employers and labor unions. Its acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon -- nominated by President Obama in January but as yet unconfirmed by the Senate -- has charged that Boeing's decision to expand production of its 787 Dreamliner in its new Charleston plant was made in retaliation for prior strikes at its Everett, Wash., plant.

Solomon's charge was brought after a complaint from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents Boeing employees in Washington state.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

The fight between Boeing Co. and the National Labor Relations Board over whether the company illegally expanded into a nonunion state as revenge against strike-happy workers could have ramifications here, Sen. Pat Toomey said.

The attempt by the federal labor board to punish the Chicago-based aerospace behemoth for building a $2 billion assembly line for its 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina might drive investments away from Pennsylvania and make expansions for existing companies more costly ventures, said Toomey, a Republican from Lehigh County.

"The fear will be if we invest in Pennsylvania, we cannot later move or expand into a nonunion state without being challenged," Toomey told the Tribune-Review. "It puts a state like Pennsylvania at a further competitive disadvantage if this stands."

Big Labor Bailout:

Following the complaint by the NLRB, [South Carolina] Governor Haley said all candidates for President in 2012 should make clear how they would address this complaint. Appearing on ABC's This Week, Governor Haley noted that President Obama, a candidate in 2012, has yet to tell South Carolinians how he would address this issue.