Nat'l Labor Relations Board rises from the dead, goes after Boeing

[Grace62]

Interesting case. In a nutshell, NLRB says Boeing broke federal law when it moved the proposed 2nd line of 787 Dreamliner production from Everett, WA to South Carolina. NLRB says Boeing did this to punish Washington workers for striking. (South Carolina got the deal only after the mechanic's union was decertified in the state.)
The complaint was requested by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
Republican heads are exploding, as expected.

It's been a long, long time since we had any pro-labor action at this level in the US - outcome will be interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/busine....html?_r=1

About the union decertification:
Story Published: Sep 10, 2009 at 3:27 PM PDT
S.C. Boeing workers vote to decertify union

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) - Workers at a South Carolina Boeing Co. plant have voted against continued representation by a union as the company considers the site for a second assembly line for its new 787 wide-body jetliner.

Workers at the North Charleston plant, which makes fuselage sections for the 787, voted 199-68 Thursday against continued representation by the International Association of Machinists.

Anyone who wants to challenge the vote has seven days to file an objection before the results are certified, Eslinger said.

The workers, by a slim margin, voted for union representation when the plant was owned by Vought. Boeing last month bought the plant from Vought for $580 million plus about $420 million in debt forgiveness.

The decertification vote came as Boeing considers the South Carolina plant for a second assembly line for its new 787 jetliner.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/58650767.html

[Grace62]

Boeing's response:

In a forceful letter sent Tuesday to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), top Boeing lawyer Michael Luttig rejected the labor agency's complaint against the company's opening of a South Carolina 787 plant, writing that the charges "fundamentally misquote or mischaracterize statements by Boeing executives."

The letter frames the dispute between Boeing and the NLRB as a matter of interpreting specific public statements made by Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief Jim Albaugh and Boeing CEO Jim McNerney.

Those statements clearly articulate that repeated strikes by the Machinists union were a factor — indeed an "overriding factor," according to Albaugh — in the company's 2009 decision to place a second 787 Dreamliner assembly line in North Charleston, S.C., instead of in Everett.

But Luttig's letter argues that this was an economic consideration "entirely permissible under existing law." He rejects the notion that the statements prove Boeing's intent was to "punish" the union work force for strikes in 2005 and 2008.

It is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act for employers to retaliate against workers for engaging in lawful activities, including strikes.

The letter is Boeing's first formal response to the complaint, filed two weeks ago by NLRB acting general counsel Lafe Solomon.
...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/bu...ing05.html

[hal]

Sounds like a big waste of effort - of course boing wants to go where there are no strikes - that is certainly an economic incentive. Good luck proving that they made this move as a punishment...

[Mac1337]

Go for it Obama. Crush'em. Washington state deserves it.

[Grace62]

hal wrote:
Sounds like a big waste of effort - of course boing wants to go where there are no strikes - that is certainly an economic incentive. Good luck proving that they made this move as a punishment...

Boeing executives' own words are their problem here. They did say they were moving in order to avoid future strikes, which is against federal law. This probably seems foreign to a lot of Americans now because no administration for a long time has stood up for workers' rights. Every gov't move has supported corporations over workers, including of course foreign outsourcing of jobs. Saying to a union that the company will move if they strike is essentially taking away the right the strike, which is against federal law. Just hasn't been enforced for quite some time.
What's really surprising about the complaint is the proposed remedy: Boeing closes down the SC operation and returns the jobs to Washington.
I have no strong opinion on which way this should go, but I see where NLRB and the machinists' union are coming from, in enforcing current law.

[Grace62]

Dakota wrote:
Go for it Obama. Crush'em. Washington state deserves it.

What?

[Mac1337]

A stable Democratic state gets screwed by their favorite president. Get it, Grace?

[Grace62]

No, that does not make any sense. Are you able to consider that Boeing broke the law in asking the IAM for a no-strike guarantee clause when it was trying to broker a deal to keep the line in Washington? The law is the law, President Obama didn't write this law, which has been on the books since the 1930's.

Is Boeing above the law? (God, let's don't even go there.)

[cbelt3]

Sounds like a lot of 'he said she said' hullabaloo. We will see what happens in court.

However... the days of "big Unions" should be over, especially if the union is an opponent instead of a partner. Yes, unions can and should be partners in business. If they are not, the relationship changes from symbiosis to parasitism. With the decline of manufacturing in the late 1970's and early 1980's, many Unions adopted the 'we will get ours' parasitic approach, and drove their respective companies out of the area, out of the country, and in some cases out of business.

NLRB should be working to build trust and improve working relationships between Labor and Business. American workers can be successful without fighting the company that pays their wages. American unions can be successful without 'sticking it to the Man'.

Admittedly, I work for a non-union company. Who publishes our financial results quarterly on all the bulletin boards. Who has presentations for all the workers (factory as well as office) every quarter to talk about how we're doing, and what we're doing to get better. Who has had an open door policy since the 1930's, a representative council where no holds are barred and no question is prohibited. Who hasn't laid off a worker with more than 3 years employment since 1935. And who consistently pays a year end profit sharing bonus that has, in years past, exceeded 100% of annual pay. Treat your employees like family and you won't need a union middleman.

[Grace62]

It's not clear to me how the people who design, produce, and maintain the product, therefore creating the company's profits, value, and reputation, can be referred to as "parasites."