Wednesday NLRB overreach roundup

Boeing headquarters, Chicago

Another day, another opportunity to report on NLRB overreach. Here's today's collection:

The Charleston Regional Business Journal:

A right-to-work advocacy group wants to represent Boeing employees in the legal battle between the aircraft manufacturer and the National Labor Relations Board.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., is in talks with a few employees about arguing their side in the case, set to go before an administrative law judge on June 14, said Patrick Semmens, director of legal information.

Semmens said more than 1,000 Boeing employees in South Carolina could lose their jobs if the National Labor Relations Board, on behalf of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, prevails.

"That position ought to be represented in the case," Semmens said.

Hot Air:

The complaint against Boeing might have just been the beginning. It seems the National Labor Relations Board can't bear to let businesses relocate without allowing unions to have a say.

Current NLRB rules allow a business to move without first negotiating the relocation with its union — provided the decision doesn't turn on labor costs. But according to a recent internal memo from the NLRB general counsel’s office, NLRB Chairman Wilma Liebman now wants to compel businesses to provide unions with information about relocation decisions in advance. That way, Liebman reasons, unions will have a chance to ascertain to what extent the business is moving because of labor costs — and will ultimately be able to bargain against the move.

On one level, this sounds sensible: If a business decides to relocate and the decision seems to be based primarily on labor cost concerns, union leaders might complain to the NLRB — and say, given the chance to bargain, they would have made concessions that might have altered the business' decision. In other words, requiring businesses to advise unions as to the motivation for a move in advance might necessitate bargaining — but it might also spare companies NLRB involvement. That seems to be what Liebman wants businesses to believe, anyway.

But to require business leaders to provide unions with this kind of detailed information about their business plan is just one step closer to making unions "equal partner[s] in the running of the business enterprise" — and the Supreme Court has already said the National Labor Relations Act in no way mandates such equal partnership.

Harrisonburg Daily News Record:

So has it come to this in America-—that a giant of American capitalism cannot expand its multibillion-dollar operation without first receiving government approval to do so?

It certainly appears that way in the case of Boeing Corp.'s decision to build a new Dreamliner factory outside Charleston, S.C.

We've noted Boeing’s efforts in this space before — how it reacted to global demand for its new 787 Dreamliner jet, how it explored possible locations for a new facility (including its current assembly operation in Everett, Wash.), and how it settled on a site in North Charleston and transformed swampy marshland into a 1.2 million square-foot plant whose construction phase alone, company CEO Jim McNerney said, offered an unemployment-wracked state 9,000 new jobs.

In other words, what's not to like about such a prospect, especially in recessionary times? When up and running — the target date for opening is July — this factory will employ 1,000 people. Not in the last 40 years, Mr. McNerney noted in commentary for The Wall Street Journal last week, has a new jet assembly plant gone on-line in this country.

The Washington Times:

The most provocative and potentially most dangerous economic policy initiative of the Obama administration is only now beginning to attract coverage — its proposal to shut down Boeing’s second 787 Dreamliner plant in right-to-work South Carolina in mid-stream (after hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent) in order to confine Boeing’s new airplane construction to a union state (Washington).

There is much convincing analysis that the National Labor Relations Board has no authority or precedent for doing this. What needs to be examined is whether the move in fact is not also unconstitutional as a frontal assault on a central building block of our national economy.

When most people think of the commerce clause of the Constitution, they think of how much power it authorizes Congress to legislate over the American economy. Does it, to take a current example, support the individual mandate in the Obama health care legislation? Most people do not think about an equally important but little (publicly) understood aspect — namely, the "dormant" (or "negative") commerce clause. This is the part of the Constitution most responsible for our vibrant economy.

This central pillar of our economic system was developed early in our history by Chief Justice John Marshall. The great British historian Paul Johnson has observed that Marshall's rulings "formed a firm legal basis on which entrepreneurial capitalism could flourish mightily. There has been nothing to rival [this[…]] in the entire world history of jurisprudence — countless millions of ordinary American enjoy affluent today because" of Marshall. His rulings established that, even in the absence of federal legislation banning state interference with the internal market of the U.S., the commerce clause itself prohibits state interference with the free flow of commerce.

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