Marathon Pundit: Ninth week of the Boeing-NLRB dispute

The overreach continues reaching out after nine weeks.

From the Wall Street Journal:

A National Labor Relations Board official defended the organization's actions against Boeing Co. for the plane maker's decision to build a 787 Dreamliner factory in non-union South Carolina.

NLRB acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, testified at a field hearing here Friday convened by House oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.). For Republicans, the Boeing case has been a chance to draw attention to what they believe is a broader pattern of the Obama administration favoring organized labor over economic growth.

"Thousands of people will be unemployed if the NLRB complaint is successful," Boeing employee Cynthia Ramaker testified. "Losing my job at Boeing will be personally catastrophic to myself and the workers at the North Charleston Boeing facility. We are home-owners, we have families that will be affected."

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called the NLRB move "an attack on states that work hard." She added: "This needs to be the last time we need to deal with this."

Bloomberg:

The U.S. lawyer who filed a labor complaint against Boeing Co. over a nonunion plant the aerospace company opened in South Carolina said he regrets the fear the dispute has caused workers there about their jobs.

"These are difficult economic times, and I truly regret the anxiety this case has caused them and their families," Lafe Solomon, acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, told a congressional hearing today in the state. "The issuance of the complaint was not intended to harm the workers of South Carolina but rather to protect the rights of workers."

The NLRB said in the April 20 complaint that Boeing built the nonunion assembly plant for its new 787 Dreamliner in North Charleston, South Carolina, in retaliation for work stoppages by unions at its Seattle-area production hub. At a hearing in North Charleston today before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Republicans pressed Solomon to show evidence the company was punishing the Machinists union.

"Can you name me a single, solitary worker in Washington state" who lost jobs or benefits? asked Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina. "Where is the retaliation?"

Solomon was unable to name a single worker harmed.

Pajamas Media's Tatler blog'

A coalition of 86 national business associations, and 131 state and local organizations is stepping up to oppose the Obama administration's National Labor Relations Board’s efforts to impose "card check" and other anti-business efforts, the Tatler has learned. The group, called the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, has sent a letter to Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Tim Scott (R-SC) and Joe Wilson (R-SC), which thanks them for sponsoring H.R. 1976, the Job Protection Act. H.R. 1976 would amend the National Labor Relations Act to clarify its applicability with respect to state right to work laws, reining the agency in after a series of unprecedented actions that heavily tilt toward Big Labor.

Sen. Mitch McConnell spoke to the National Journal about the overreach:

"I cannot imagine the Clinton administration doing anything like this," McConnell said, referring to the Boeing-NLRB flap. "And when President Clinton said he was in favor of a treaty for a free trade agreement, he sent it up and he argued for it and helped us pass it. This is a very, very left-wing administration."

Boeing has opened a second Dreamliner production facility in North Charleston, S.C., to boost production of the popular airliner. The NLRB has filed a complaint against the company, arguing it opened the factory in right-to-work South Carolina to punish unionized workers in Washington state who have engaged in work stoppages five times since 1975, most recently a 58-day strike in 2008. The Boeing facility is up and running, and 1,000 employees are due to begin work on the first 787 jetliner this summer -- which has not reduced Boeing's Everett, Wash., workforce. Boeing has increased its unionized workforce by 2,000 since announcing the South Carolina expansion in 2009. Settlement talks between Boeing and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers have foundered.

"It's very, very disturbing," McConnell said of the Boeing-NLRB standoff. “Somebody needs to remind the NLRB that instead of creating jobs in South Carolina, they could be creating jobs in Mexico. This is an outrageous governmental overreach. If I were the president of the United States, I would say, 'Thank you, Boeing, for creating jobs in South Carolina and not creating them some other place in the world.' I'd be patting them on the back and going to the ribbon-cutting if I were invited. Even though he didn’t do this, he can comment on it just like anybody else in the country. It’s shocking. When an agency does something [Obama] disagreed with, he could say something about it -- which would comfort American business if he spoke up and said, 'Look, I want to thank Boeing for creating jobs in South Carolina rather than Mexico, Peru, or any other place in the world.'"

James Pethokoukis in Reuters:

Obamaland's assault on Boeing went from economic tragedy to political farce during a House Oversight Committee field hearing in South Carolina on Friday. Lafe Solomon, acting counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, dropped this gem:

These are difficult economic times, and I truly regret the anxiety this case has caused them and their families. The issuance of the complaint was not intended to harm the workers of South Carolina but rather to protect the rights of workers.

Intent doesn't pay the bills.

The Hill:

The chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee said Friday that he is conducting a hearing into the National Labor Relations Board's complaint against airplane manufacturer Boeing because "there is an awful lot of political input" on the panel.

The NLRB filed a complaint alleging Boeing decided to build a plant that would produce 787 airplanes in South Carolina in retaliation for labor strikes by workers at its Puget Sound plant near Seattle.

In an interview on the Fox Business Network, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said that acting NLRB general counsel Lafe Solomon is legally allowed to launch such a complaint, but questions why he did.

"Very clearly he has sole authority, so it’s a one-man decision, but this is an acting general counsel who has been nominated by the president, so there is an awful lot of political input," Issa said. "Three out of four appointees on the board are Obama appointees and there is a vacancy."

But capitalism marches on. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Boeing is leaning toward a bigger version of the 787 Dreamliner as the US company seeks to out-maneuver Airbus SAS in a widebody jetliner market it reckons will be worth almost $US2 trillion over the next 20 years.

The 787-10 could enter service by 2016, Jim Albaugh, Boeing’s commercial airplanes chief, said yesterday ahead of the Paris Air Show. That would provide competition for Airbus’s A350-900 and steal a march on the larger A350-1000, which won’t be ready until 2017, according to a schedule announced June 18.

“We have to go through some more analysis and we haven’t decided yet if we’ll offer it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we did,” Albaugh said in an interview in the French capital.