Boeing and the proposed SC plant

[SEC=UGA]

Boeing was retaliating illegally against its largest union when it decided in 2009 to put a second 787 Dreamliner assembly line in a nonunion plant in South Carolina, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charged in a complaint filed Wednesday.

 

To remedy the alleged violation, the complaint says, Boeing should be ordered to operate the second line at a union plant in Washington.

 

Boeing said it would "vigorously contest" the case and proceed with plans to start assembling planes in Charleston, S.C., in July. "This doesn't change anything," spokesman Tim Neale said.

 

The South Carolina plant could be operating for years before the dispute is decided, a labor-law expert said.

 

"This process can take a long, long time to play out," said Ross Runkel, a professor emeritus of law at Willamette University and labor-law specialist.

 

The first step in that process — a hearing in Seattle before an administrative-law judge — is scheduled June 14.

 

NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon filed the complaint after a yearlong investigation of an unfair-labor practices charge brought in March 2010 by Seattle-based International Association of Machinists (IAM) District 751, the largest union at Boeing.

 

The IAM said Boeing was retaliating for a 2008 strike, and seeking to discourage potential future strikes, when it chose to locate the second line in Charleston rather than in the Puget Sound area.

 

Solomon agreed, citing numerous public statements by Boeing executives that South Carolina was chosen in large part to avoid production disruptions from potential strikes.

 

Boeing's actions were "inherently destructive of the rights guaranteed employees" by federal labor law, the NLRB said.

 

Boeing plans to assemble seven planes a month at its unionized plant in Everett and three planes a month at its nonunion plant in Charleston.

 

To win the Boeing plant, South Carolina offered the company $170 million in upfront grants for startup costs, plus tax breaks that would be worth tens of millions of dollars more.

 

The Machinists union has struck Boeing's Puget Sound-area factories four times since 1989, most recently in 2008. Before Boeing announced where it would build the second 787 line, the company and the union held secret talks over a potential 10-year no-strike agreement.

 

The union hailed the NLRB's complaint as "a victory for all American workers."

 

The Charleston plant was an initiative by Boeing "to intimidate our members with the idea that the company would take away their work unless they made concessions at the bargaining table," District 751 President Tom Wroblewski said in a prepared statement.

 

Boeing continues to engage in the kind of activity the NLRB condemns, said union spokeswoman Connie Kelliher. She noted the recent move to have some Dreamliner parts for the South Carolina line made at a nonunion plant in North Carolina — rather than at unionized plants here — to keep the line running in case of strikes.

 

Michael Luttig, Boeing's executive vice president and general counsel, said in a prepared statement that the NLRB's complaint is "legally frivolous and represents a radical departure from both NLRB and Supreme Court precedent."

 

Two 1965 U.S. Supreme Court cases affirm employers' right to consider potential strikes in making business decisions, Boeing spokesman Neale said: "We're very optimistic that the law is on our side."

 

But the NLRB said the law and previous board decisions clearly bar employers from threatening workers with job losses for union-related activities.

 

NLRB spokeswoman Nancy Cleeland said the agency has held numerous settlement discussions with Boeing and the IAM since the union filed its complaint. She said she knows of no such talks under way now.

 

If there's no agreement, the administrative-law judge's ruling on the complaint can be appealed to the full, five-member NRLB.

 

The board always has been highly political, said Runkel, the law professor, and its handling of cases that involve companies moving work from union to nonunion sites has varied radically, depending on which party is in the majority.

 

Any board decision, in turn, can be appealed to federal courts.

 

Three of the five NLRB board seats now are held by Democrats. "I expect them to take a hard line on this," Runkel said.

 

Solomon, the general counsel filing the complaint, is an Obama administration appointee who operates independently of the board.

 

It's rare for the NLRB to seek to force an employer to move work back to a unionized plant from a nonunion one when it determines labor law has been violated, Runkel said.

 

He couldn't recollect a recent example and said he knows of no Supreme Court decision directly addressing that scenario.

 

The NLRB's case would be stronger, he added, if Boeing had reduced employment in Washington when it decided to open the plant in South Carolina.

 

Boeing said that, while it has hired more than 1,000 new workers in South Carolina, IAM employment in the Puget Sound area actually has increased by 2,000 since October 2009, when the Charleston plant was announced.

 

But Kelliher, the union spokeswoman, said most of those local jobs aren't related to the Dreamliner.

 

While the South Carolina plant gets up to speed, Boeing is setting up a second, temporary 787 assembly bay in Everett, what it calls a "surge" line to help ramp up production of the long-delayed plane.

 

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the NLRB complaint, if successful, would give unions a virtual veto over business decisions.

 

"Left to their own devices, the NLRB would routinely punish right-to-work states that value and promote their pro-business climates."

 

Joe Trauger, a vice president with the National Association of Manufacturers, also slammed the complaint. If it is upheld, he wrote in a blog post, "no company will be safe from the NLRB stepping in to second-guess its business decisions on where to expand or whom to hire."

 

The Boeing case is the latest example of a labor board that has been more active in defending the rights of unions since gaining a Democratic majority last year, the first time in nearly a decade. In recent months, the board has cracked down on companies that fire employees during union organizing drives. It also made waves in January when it threatened to sue South Carolina and three other states over constitutional amendments that guarantee the right to a secret ballot in union elections.

 

 

 

 

Several Republican senators penned an open letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday calling on him to immediately rescind National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) nominations for Lafe Solomon and former Service Employees International Union (SEIU) general counsel Craig Becker. Their request comes as the NLRB is leading a charge against Boeing for planning to open a non-union factory in South Carolina.

 

Republican South Carolina Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, along with the other Republican senators who signed the letter, believe Becker and Solomon seek to support labor union bosses at the expense of workers. “The NLRB, at the behest of Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon, has taken unprecedented legal action against The Boeing Company to prevent it from expanding productions into South Carolina, a state that assures workers the freedom not to join a union as a condition of employment,” the letter reads. “We consider this an attack on millions of workers in 22 right-to-work states, as well as a government-led act of intimidation against American companies that should have the freedom to choose to build plants in right-to-work states. If the NLRB prevails, it will only encourage companies to make their investments in foreign nations, moving jobs and economic growth overseas.”

 

Becker and Solomon were both recess-appointed to the NLRB and, in Becker’s case, all 41 Republican senators wrote Obama to urge him not to make Becker’s recess appointment after the Senate rejected his nomination the first time around. Solomon has not yet appeared before the Senate for confirmation.

 

Old law review articles obtained by The Daily Caller that were authored by Becker further inflame the already heated debate. “The right to engage in concerted activity that is enshrined in the Wagner Act – even when construed in strictly contractual terms – implicitly entails legal restraint of the freedom of capital,” he wrote in the January 1987 edition of the Harvard Law Review. “What threatens to eviscerate labor’s collective legal rights, therefore, is less the common law principle of individual liberty than the mobility of capital, which courts have held immune from popular control.”

 

“If you cut through all the academic speak here, in effect, what he’s saying is collective bargaining and the Wagner Act doesn’t set up a system of collective bargaining. It sets up a guaranteed outcome,” explained Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson. “What he’s saying here is labor unions can’t possibly succeed unless you guarantee their success. In his reading of the law, any notion of workers who choose to collectively bargain sitting down with their employer and working out a deal is gone.”

 

Workforce Fairness Institute spokesman Fred Wszolek said Becker’s old law school article is worrisome, given the degree of influence Becker has on the economy and on future labor policy.

 

“To learn that a member of President Obama’s labor board believes that the United States should somehow control or restrain the freedom of capital, or that the mobility of capital not being under ‘popular control’ is somehow a threat to Big Labor is simply not consistent with core American values,” Wszolek said in an email to TheDC. “The fact that Craig Becker will be one of the board members deciding whether the complaint against Boeing has any merit is something that should alarm every taxpayer and business in this nation concerned with jobs and the economy.”

 

The Republican senators who signed the letter to President Obama said if Obama doesn’t immediately rescind Becker and Solomon’s nominations, they’ll use all the power at their disposal to combat them. “In light of the NLRB’s recent actions that would have a deleterious effect on job creation and economic opportunity across the country, it is time to hold the NLRB accountable,” they wrote. “We urge you to withdraw both Mr. Solomon’s and Mr. Becker’s nominations to their respective positions immediately. If not, we will vigorously oppose both nominations, vote against cloture and use all procedural tools available to defeat their confirmation in the Senate.”

[Boilerduff]

What a steaming pile of Dog crap this is...

[Azazello1313]

What a steaming pile of Dog crap this is...

 

+1

[SEC=UGA]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- There's a new battle brewing between big business and labor.

 

A factory in South Carolina could soon be home to 1,000 new workers assembling Boeing's newest commercial jet. But as it prepares for the first jet to roll off the line this summer, Boeing must first go head to head with the National Labor Relations Board.

 

And the factory has also become ground zero for a political debate between Democrats and Republicans on how to create jobs.

 

It all began last month, when the NLRB filed a complaint, charging that Boeing broke the law when it decided to shift some production of its new 787 "Dreamliner" jet to the new factory in South Carolina from its union-represented plant in Washington State.

 

The NLRB claims that Boeing's intent was to punish the International Association of Machinists for the union's past strikes.

 

"A worker's right to strike is a fundamental right," said NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon when he issued the complaint. "We also recognize the rights of employers to make business decisions based on their economic interests, but they must do so within the law."

 

Boeing (BA, Fortune 500) moved to open the new factory after failing to win a non-strike promise from the IAM union, which most recently struck against Boeing for 58 days in 2008.

 

Company executives cited the need to insure production of the Dreamliner as one reason for building the new line in South Carolina, which is a right-to-work state -- meaning workers can choose whether or not they want to be unionized.

 

The NLRB says it's not trying to prevent Boeing from opening the plant altogether. It just doesn't want Boeing to shift work away from the union-represented workers in Washington.

 

"Once that plant is up and running, our members in Puget Sound will be saying, 'That's what happens if we strike, if we negotiate hard at the bargaining table, they take our work away,'" said Chris Corson, general counsel of the International Association of Machinists.

 

But Boeing insists that the 23,000 Machinist union members in Washington will not lose work to the South Carolina plant, which will build three of the ten 787 jets now being built each month. Workers in Washington will instead be put to work on other aircraft.

 

But the Dreamliner is simply too important to risk interruptions from union disputes, said company spokesman Tim Neale.

 

"They're starting to give us a reputation as an unreliable supplier," said Neale of the union. "We pay penalties to the customers when we're late delivering the planes." Boeing estimates the last strike cost it $1.8 billion.

 

And even if some of the Dreamliner production is shifted to South Carolina, hourly employment at the Washington plant is still on the rise, said Neale.

 

"We're in a hiring mode across the board," he said.

 

Starting pay at the South Carolina plant will be about $14 an hour compared to $15 an hour at the Washington plant, according to the IAM. A veteran worker at that plant earns about $27 an hour, or about $56,000 a year before overtime.

 

The case will go before the full NLRB next month. Boeing and the IAM both vow that they will appeal the case to Federal Court if they loses before the bipartisan board.

 

Republicans have seized on the dispute as proof that the Obama administration is to blame for businesses not creating more jobs.

 

"The Boeing story illustrates this administration's focus on favoring unions at the cost of creating the kind of middle-class jobs we all want," said Sen. Michael Enzi, the lead Republican on a Senate labor panel hearing that focused on the case last week.

 

Congressional Republicans have tried to slash the funding of the NLRB and demanded that the acting general counsel who brought the case be fired.

 

Boeing CEO Jim McNerney, who chairs the president's export council, said the case against his company is a "fundamental assault on capitalist principles."

 

Though the Obama administration has remained quiet on the case, other Democrats have hit back, accusing the Republicans of distorting the facts of the case.

 

"If we let powerful CEOs trample all over these rights without consequences, we might as well give up on having a middle class altogether," said Sen. Tom Harkin, the Democratic chairman of the senate's labor panel.

 

"What we are really witnessing here is another example of the Republican assault on the middle class that has been echoing across the country for months now," Harkin said.

 

While both Boeing and the Machinist union express confidence they will prevail in the ultimate legal battle, the Machinists' Corson said he is concerned that the union could win the legal fight and lose the public relations war.

 

"Boeing is so far pretty successfully using this case to throw some red meat at the larger debate in this country about labor and capitalism," he said. "I think our message is getting out, but I don't think we have as much money and connections as Boeing does." To top of page

Edited May 20, 2011 by SEC=UGA

[SayItAintSoJoe]

"They're starting to give us a reputation as an unreliable supplier," said Neale of the union. "We pay penalties to the customers when we're late delivering the planes." Boeing estimates the last strike cost it $1.8 billion.

 

How much did management’s Global Outsourcing Strategy regarding the 787 project affect the company’s reputation or costs? I've read it cost them like 18 billion. There's been more to this project than just union troubles.