Today, the National Labor Relations Board announced a complaint against The Boeing Company, which would effectively set a national standard of prohibiting companies with some union representation from expanding in right-to-work states. By pursuing this case, the NLRB is reversing 45 years of its own precedent and Supreme Court rulings to advance its agenda to expand unionization.
In a case of no-good-deed-goes-unpunished, Boeing attempted to negotiate with the union representing its employees in the Puget Sound region, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), but were met with demands that would have damaged the company’s ability to compete in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. As a result, Boeing made a decision to build a new facility in South Carolina, which is not unionized, to give it the added production capacity it needs for its very successful 787 Dreamliner. Boeing has invested millions of dollars and created more than 1,000 new jobs in South Carolina. (See Boeing’s news release, “Boeing to Fight NLRB Complaint Backed by Union.”)
If the IAM and NLRB succeed in their complaint, 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 National Association of Manufacturers believes the NLRB has greatly overstepped its bounds and would be wise to seriously reconsider its decision to pursue this complaint.
Joe Trauger is NAM’s vice president for human resources policy.
April 20th, 2011 on 6:04 pm
While employees have the right to strike, NLRA Section 13, and the right to engage in protected concerted activities, NLRA Section 7, employers have the right to conduct their businesses – without deliberately incurring losses – including locking out employees and replacing economic strikers. In this case, Boeing made CLEAR on MULTIPLE OCCASIONS to the employees’ representatives, a/k/a union, that it had incurred too many strikes, strikes are costly, and strikes often resulted in failure to deliver planes on time to customers. Not only is this complaint unwarranted but it is overstepping to seek an order restoring the disputed work as a remedy for an alleged implied threat to hamper future strike activities. Moreover, since when does a supposedly “neutral” adjudicatory agency pre-judge a case and issue a flood of negative publicity in tandem with a Complaint alleging misconduct BEFORE the matter has even been tried before an administrative law judge. This is showing respect for the “rule of law” ?????