"Not shovel ready" NLRB-Boeing overreach report

Yesterday President Obama hosted his Jobs and Competitiveness summit in North Carolina, announcing an "all-hands-on-deck strategy" to increase private-sector hiring. Meanwhile, The Street writes that the Boeing case proves that the government is Big Labor's last friend.

But Obama's radicalized-National Labor Relations Board is the job-seekers worst friend.

As for the president's failed stimulus, Obama dismissed it with a joke t that summit, "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected."

More NLRB-Boeing overreach, first from AP:

A judge is set to hear a government labor-law complaint filed against Boeing Co.

The National Labor Relations Board accuses Boeing of illegally retaliating against union workers for past strikes by adding a non-union assembly line for its new 787 passenger jet in South Carolina. The NLRB said the remedy should include moving the South Carolina assembly work to Washington state, where other 787s are assembled.

The hearing scheduled to open Tuesday in Seattle before an NLRB judge is expected to last more than a month.

The complaint filed in April quotes public statements by Boeing executives saying they selected South Carolina in part to avoid future labor disruptions. The complaint says that amounts to discrimination based on union activity.

The Daily Caller:

Senate Republicans say the Obama administration is intent on undermining the right-to-work laws that are in force in 22 states, as evidenced by a recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint against Boeing.

Right-to-work laws forbid workers from being required to join unions as a condition of their employment, and a Senate GOP bill aims to protect employers who wish to expand into right-to-work states.

“For the last two years the major battle over labor relations was over card check over the secret ballot, over card check,” Tennessee GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander said. “Now I think it shifts to the right-to-work law and whether the administration can stop companies from locating in right-to-work states, which is obviously the goal of complaints like this.”

Alexander has co-sponsored the bill together with South Carolina Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, and 32 other co-sponsors.

The bill, S 964, would protect the right of employers to discuss the costs associated with strikes and other consequences of having a unionized workforce without fear of reprisals. It would also prevent the NLRB from telling an employer where it has to employ workers.

Law Week Colorado:

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers joined a bipartisan group of 16 attorneys general who are siding with The Boeing Company in its June 14 face-off with the National Labor Relations Board, reports Corporate Counsel Magazine.

NLRB general counsel Lafe Solomon filed in April an unfair labor practices complaint against Boeing, alleging the company built a plant in a right-to-work state in retaliation against union workers in Washington State. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner Final Assembly opened its doors June 10 in North Charleston, S.C.

The Seattle Times:

In its complaint, the NLRB is attempting to reverse a U.S. investment by the nation's No. 1 exporter 17 months after the company decided to make it — after the money has been spent, after the equipment is set up and after 1,000 workers have been hired. In South Carolina, assembly of the first 787 is scheduled to begin this summer. For the government to demand now that the company move everything to another state shows no sense of practical reality.

The "other state" is, of course, our own. This newspaper favored the company building the second 787 line here. We want Boeing to build its next commercial jetliner here and all its commercial jetliners here. But that is Boeing's decision to make, not the government's.

The NLRB's complaint takes the weird position that Boeing has a right to put a plant in South Carolina if it keeps its mouth shut, but that if it complains about the history of strikes in Washington, it is being "punitive" and is breaking the law.

But recall what the company was doing in the fall of 2008. It was offering to put the second 787 line here if Aerospace Machinists would agree to a 10-year no-strike contract. Boeing did not have to make that offer, but it did. The union did not agree to it, and that was its right; but there is nothing illegal in Boeing making it. Under the NLRB's complaint, however, the company would have been better off deciding for South Carolina and saying nothing.

National Review Online:

One of the cardinal roles of the NLRB is to protect employees' free and informed decisions on the issue of union representation. Consistent with that goal, the board has over many decades arrived at election procedures that allow for an election window of three to six weeks after a petition is filed. This permits the board to conduct a statutorily required hearing if the parties are unable to reach agreement on certain pre-election issues and to complete other pre-election requirements. The window also gives management the opportunity to learn about the union and either support it or assemble a case against it and make its reasons known to its workers. Organized labor abhors this opportunity because employees are less likely to vote for union representation if they are given the opportunity to consider both sides.

The current election procedures work. Under this system, union density in the private sector reached 35 percent in the 1950s, when the election window was roughly the same or a bit larger.

Big Labor wants the rules of the game changed.

For variety of social, political, and economic reasons entirely unrelated to the board and its election procedures, union density has fallen below 7 percent for the first time. But instead of looking in the mirror and considering changes to the predominant combative, zero-sum union model that was a better fit for the 1930s and '40s than for the 21st century, Big Labor is clamoring for its partisans at the NLRB to change the election rules to favor a union outcome. And its partisans at the board are prepared to do just that.

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