Marathon Pundit: Boeing-NLRB overreach video edition

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Boeing-NLRB overreach video edition

The NLRB overreach keeps reaching out.

First a video, from CBN:

Because if you thought last week's big ribbon-cutting ceremony for Boeing's new South Carolina plant meant "right to work" was "good to go"..."not so fast."

Here's the deal.

You heard me right. Not weeks. Months. That's how long lawyers for Boeing and the National Labor Relations Board could be going at it in a Seattle courtroom.

And that's just the time it will take for each side to make its case before an administrative law judge. The losing side will almost assuredly appeal...and then it gets really complicated.

First to the NLRB board. Then a federal court. Then the U.S. Supreme court.

Another video, this time from CBS News:

WCSC-TV Charleston:

An employee from the Boeing plant in North Charleston is suing the union at the center of the national labor Dispute for unfair labor practices.

The complaint, which is one of two complaints that have been filed in the battle of Boeing, was filed with the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday. Court is currently in day two of hearings over the NLRB's original complaint.

The new complaint says the International Association of Machinists is retaliating against Boeing employees in South Carolina because a non-union production line was built here instead of in Washington.

Lynchburg News & Advance:

For a president who likes to tell the American people he’s focused like a laser on creating new jobs, Barack Obama certainly has a funny way of showing it.

Case in point: the $1 billion Boeing factory in South Carolina, constructed to build the next generation of passenger jet, the 787 Dreamliner. Hundreds of jobs await South Carolinians at the plant. Highly paid, highly skilled and highly sought-after jobs.

Yet they're jobs President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board is trying its best to kill.

The NLRB, in cahoots with Boeing's machinists union, has brought suit contending that Boeing’s opening the plant in a right-to-work state, rather than a union state like Washington, is an illegal attempt to punish the union for past strikes and work stopages at the airline giant.

Santa Maria Times:

It seems the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is moving to block Boeing Corp.'s decision to build the new 747 Dreamliner in South Carolina, a right-to-work state, instead of Seattle, Wash., a state which imposes compulsory union rules.

The obviously union-pandering NLRB is, for the first time, putting itself in the position of intervening in the American business decision-making process. Certainly they are overstepping their bounds in trying to tell corporate America where it can or cannot do business within the United States.

Workers in the state of Washington are complaining that this economically driven decision is taking jobs away from the local economy, and that the Boeing must bring those jobs, even if it cuts into the bottom line.

Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and a number of Republican leaders have called on President Obama, asking that he put pressure on the NLRB to drop its recent allegations that Boeing, the nation's largest airline manufacturer, broke federal labor laws when it made its decision to move part of its Dreamliner manufacturing efforts to South Carolina, instead of increasing production at the company's main plant located in Puget Sound, Wash.

Reason.com:

The key difference between the two Boeing locations is the cost of doing business. The unionized workforce in Everett has walked the picket line five times since 1975, most recently in 2008, where the strike lasted 52 days. As Boeing’s Executive Vice President Jim Albaugh told The Seattle Times, "we cannot afford to have a work stoppage, you know, every three years." CEO Jim McNerney made similar comments in a quarterly earnings report posted on the company's intranet, where he mentioned "strikes happening every three to four years in Puget Sound" as one of the reasons for locating new production elsewhere.

Those comments might sound like a lesson from Business School 101, but to the NLRB they are evidence of Boeing's illegal retaliation against its unionized workers in the Evergreen State. Under the government's theory of the case, Boeing is punishing the union for going on strike and seeking to discourage future walkouts. If the NLRB is successful, Boeing would have to shutter its new South Carolina facility—which just opened last Friday with 1,000 newly-hired workers—and "operate its second line of 787 Dreamliner aircraft assembly production in the State of Washington."

Take a moment to let that sink in. The federal government would override Boeing’s business decision and force the company to set up shop where it commands. Also keep in mind that Boeing hasn't fired a single unionized employee in Washington or shifted a single piece of existing union work out of state. In fact, the company has added an additional 2,000 union jobs in Washington since announcing its plans for the South Carolina facility last year and says it plans on hiring more. Not exactly an anti-union jihad.

And while those comments from senior management about striking workers were perhaps ill-advised from a public relations standpoint, they were hardly groundless. As Virgin Airlines founder Richard Branson declared after the 2008 work stoppage, "if union leaders and management can’t get their act together to avoid strikes, we're not going to come back here again. We're already thinking, 'would we ever risk putting another order with Boeing?' It's that serious."

Another video--from Fox News:

Politico:

A federal lawsuit against Boeing for alleged union-busting has become more than a conservative crusade; it's an uncomfortable question for vulnerable Democrats in right-to-work states.

Vulnerable Democrats face an almost impossible choice: Side with Boeing and buck not only the White House but also ditch the unions that have long contributed to Democratic campaigns. But side with the unions and the federal government in a lawsuit challenging Boeing's move into anti-union South Carolina, and you run afoul of Big Business in many Southern and Midwestern right-to-work states.

Moderate Democrats' response for now: Run.

"I really don't want to get involved," said Sen. Mary Landrieu. The moderate Democrat from Louisiana has raked in more than $1 million in union contributions since her first election in 1996.