Labor Board looking to deny Boeing from moving to South Carolina

[Dave]

How nice, a company can't move if it wants too.... thought we was in America or something.

 

By BRUCE SMITH, Associated Press – Fri Jun 17, 5:17 pm ET

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – The top lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board told a congressional committee Friday that while an NLRB complaint against Boeing Co. may make South Carolina workers feel vulnerable and anxious, the legal action is aimed at protecting the rights of workers everywhere.

The NLRB is suing the aeronautics giant alleging the manufacturer located its new 787 jet assembly line in South Carolina to retaliate against union workers in Washington state who went on strike in 2008.

The congressional hearing is the latest episode in a dispute between the NLRB, which has a majority of Democratic appointees, and GOP lawmakers and Boeing. The NLRB wants that work returned to Washington state, even though the company opened its $750 million South Carolina plant last week.

"Boeing has every right to manufacture planes in South Carolina, or anywhere else, for that matter, as long as those decisions are based on legitimate business considerations," Lafe Solomon, the agency's acting general counsel, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Relations meeting in South Carolina.

South Carolina's Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, who with 15 other GOP governors asked that the complaint be dismissed, called the complaint "an attack on our employers trying to keep business in America."

The plant represents the single largest industrial investment in the history of South Carolina, a right-to-work state.

The NLRB complaint went before a judge in Seattle earlier in the week and an attorney for Boeing asked that it be dismissed, adding it had cast a shadow over the company's employees, supplies and investments. The company said that no one has lost a job in Washington state and that Boeing has added more than 3,000 jobs at its assembly site in Everett, Wash.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson called the complaint "the shot heard around the business world" and said it could allow the NLRB to decide where companies invest business capital.

Haley warned that workers across the nation could suffer if companies take business overseas.

"The retaliation is coming from the president. The retaliation is coming from the NLRB. It is not coming from Boeing," she said.

Solomon told the panel's Republican chairman, Darrell Issa of California, that the White House played no role in his decision to bring the complaint.

Before the hearing began, a small group of protesters gathered outside holding signs saying Chicago-based Boeing must create jobs legally.

Georgette Carr, who has worked as a union dock worker for 10 years, said South Carolina needs good jobs but "companies that come here need to play by the rules."

Democrats on the committee strongly questioned why the panel was holding a field hearing the same week the NLRB complaint went to court.

"I am very concerned about the timing. His (Solomon's) testimony today raises questions about the due process rights of litigants," said U.S. Rep. Carolyn Malony of New York.

Haley has made no secret she opposes unions.

The International Association of Machinists and AFL-CIO sued earlier this year, asking for a court order telling Haley and state Department of Labor director Catherine Templeton to remain neutral in union matters in South Carolina.

The lawsuit stemmed from several remarks, including those Haley made last December when she nominated Templeton. Haley said her background would be helpful in state fights against unions, particularly at the new Boeing plant.

A federal judge is expected to rule next week on a motion to dismiss that case.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110617/ap_on_re_us/us_boeing_unions

[Dave]

Apparently, at least to this guy that wrote the blog below, he thinks that banning Boeing from moving is simply protecting the company from hiring knuckle dragging, inbred, drunk southerners... guess the more liberal minded folk in Washington state are just better people or something.

 

By THOMAS GEOGHEGAN

Conservatives are in an uproar that the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board has filed an unfair labor charge against Boeing. It seems the president of Boeing was unwise enough to blurt out that his company would move a production line to South Carolina as payback for past strikes by machinists in Seattle. It's a dead bang violation of the National Labor Relations Act, even if it comes as a surprise to Republicans and many other Americans.

Section 7 of the Wagner Act, passed in 1935, states that all workers can engage in concerted activities without reprisal. The president of Boeing said, in effect: You exercise those rights and we're moving. Companies have long done such things, of course, but CEOs aren't usually so gaffe-prone as to say so.

The Boeing case may show that labor is so out of mind that CEOs have forgotten what they can or cannot say. It would have been easy enough for Boeing to move the production line to South Carolina and let the workers in Seattle draw the conclusion. There is little bar to a runaway shop if the CEO is careful with his public statements.

Yet the Boeing case has a scarier aspect missed by conservatives: Why is Boeing, one of our few real global champions in beefing up exports, moving work on the Dreamliner from a high-skill work force ($28 an hour on average) to a much lower-wage work force ($14 an hour starting wage)? Nothing could be a bigger threat to the economic security of this country.

We should be aghast that Boeing is sending a big fat market signal that it wants a less-skilled, lower-quality work force. This country is in a debt crisis because we buy abroad much more than we sell. Alas, because of this trade deficit, foreign creditors have the country in their clutches. That's not because of our labor costs—in that respect, we can undersell most of our high-wage, unionized rivals like Germany. It's because we have too many poorly educated and low-skilled workers that are simply unable to compete.

We depend on Boeing to out-compete Airbus, its European rival. But when major firms move South, it is usually a harbinger of quality decline. Over and over as a labor lawyer in the 1980s and '90s, I saw companies move away from Chicago, where the pay was $28 an hour, to some place in South Carolina or Louisiana where the pay was about half that. While these moves aggrieved me as a union lawyer, it might have consoled me as an American if those companies went on to thrive globally.

But too often, alas, it was the beginning of the end, as it was for Outboard Marine Corporation, where I once represented workers. In the 1990s the company went from the high wage union North to the low wage South and was bankrupt by 2000. There are reasons workers in the North get $28 an hour while down in the South they get $14 or even $10. Adam Smith could explain it: "productivity," "skill level," "quality."

Here is yet another American firm seeking to ruin its reputation for quality. Why? To save $14 an hour! Seriously: Is that going to help sell the Dreamliner? In terms of the finished product, the labor cost is minuscule: $14 in hourly wage, at most. It's incredible that conservatives claim such small differences in labor cost would be life or death to Boeing. It's not labor cost but labor skill that is life or death to the survival of Boeing, never mind pilots and passengers.

If the history of runaway shops proves anything, it's that many go "South" in more than one sense of the word. If that sounds unfair to the South, it is union busting that has inflicted the real unfairness in the region: income inequality and inferior schools.

At this moment especially, deep in debt, we cannot afford to let another company like Boeing self-destruct. Boeing is not a product of the free market—it's an extension of the U.S. government. Over the years, our taxpayers have paid to create a Boeing work force with exceptionally high skills. That work force is not just an asset for Boeing—it's an asset for the country. Why should the country let Boeing take it apart? Every American should be rooting for the NLRB's general counsel, as the board itself has not yet found a violation.

Most depressing of all, Boeing's move would send a market signal to those considering a career in engineering or high-skilled manufacturing. It is a message that corporate America has delivered over and over: Don't go to engineering school, don't bother with fancy apprenticeships, don't invest in skills. No rational person wants to take on college or even community college debt to come out and work on the Dreamliner—which should be the country's finest product—for a miserable $14 an hour. If a single story in the news can sum up the reasons for America's global decline, it's the decision to build a Dreamliner that will gut the American dream.

Mr. Geoghegan, a lawyer in Chicago, is author of "Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be For Labor When It's Flat on Its Back" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991).

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702304186404576388...

[Willy]

It's hard to believe the Gov. can stop a company from doing business in a place they choose. I the Gov. blocks the move it will set a dangerous precedent.

[Sweater Cows!]

I need to read this as all I read was the title but i don't get why a company has uninons, I mean if my guys wanted to start one here couldn't I just tell them no? I guess it is different when there are only 4 people in a family biz vs. a HUGE corporation.

[Lisa O'Brien]

No you can not tell them NO - it is their right to unionize. In my opinion Unions had there place back in the day - unions guaranteed a living wage, health benefits and safety in the work place and ended discrimination among other things. Today in my opinion it offers slackers a job and penalizes good employees - because they are all treated the same.

[Dave]

Your pretty spot on Lisa. Back in the day unions were a great thing and fixed many issues between companies and its workers. In this day and age though with the various labor laws that have been made and so forth, unions simply are not needed like they once were.

[J.B]

Lisa you are about their right to unionize it they want.   But I remember in Albion  when the uaw had people quit a union shop and start working at a non union shop.   They got the union voted in and got a contract.   The union dues soaked up the raise..  When it was thankgiving all members wondered where their turkey dinner was.   When christmas came they wondered where their Ham was and most of all they where their christmas Bonus was.   That bonus ranged from $400.   to over a 1,000  by years of service.   between Blanchard new taxes that and several shops left the state  and well over 9,000 jobs lost.    Their total pay raise was $ .25  an hour.  $ 510. a year with no overtime.    the only people was the union and the company.   Never shared his profit again and union got their dues.   Only looser was the worker.