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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
Barack Obama’s interference in the business operations of Boeing new Dreamliner manufacturing project will likely cause thousands of workers in South Carolina to lose their jobs. Because of this, one Palmetto State worker is suing the federal government for its part in his probable future job loss.
This is a story about Obama’s status as the top bought-and-paid-for union hack in the country and how he is attempting to use his powers to wield regulations as a tool to punish an American business for wanting to open a new manufacturing plant in South Carolina all because the president feels that a union will be hurt in the process of the creation of thousands of new jobs.
As it happens, airplane manufacturer Boeing wants to open a new manufacturing plant in South Carolina for its new Dreamliner plane because the manufacturer had been having so many union-caused troubles in its Washington State plant.
Once the workers in South Carolina found out that Boeing intended to open a new plant in their state they held a meeting and decided to boot out the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union so as to make their fellow workers even more attractive to Boeing to entice the venture to completion in South Carolina. These workers knew that the union would hamper the efforts to create new jobs for South Carolinians.
This caused the union to run to its bought-and-paid-for commander in chief in Washington D.C. To help the union, Obama directed his National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to inform Boeing that it would not be allowed to build its new business in South Carolina simply because the IAM had lost its power over the workers there.
As a result of this unprecedented interference by a federal regulatory body under the thumb of the most anti-business president in American history, the National Right to Work Foundation’s attorneys have filed suit for Boeing employee Dennis Murray, the man who led the effort to toss oust the machinist’s union in his Charleston plant.
For his part, Obama and his NLRB have been claiming that Boeing’s new plant in South Carolina would cost the country thousands of jobs. But this Friday, National Labor Relations Board’s acting general counsel Lafe Solomon could not provide a House Oversight Committee hearing any proof that there would be any job loss.
What is clear here is that the federal government had no facts at its disposal to base its action against Boeing on in the first place. The NLRB moved forward on its action with no facts and no solid finds but only with a base assumption it made no effort to confirm beforehand. Obama’s NLRB went forward with only one goal: giving unions a payoff. And remembering that unions paid Obama millions during his political career, the whole thing smacks of quid pro quo and not legitimate government interests.
Senator Jim DeMint (R, SC) wants some answers as to why Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) thinks it has the power to tell American businesses where they are allowed to build their newest manufacturing facilities.
On June 6 Senator DeMint’s office filed a freedom of information request demanding documents connected to the NLRBs decisions to try to force Boeing not to open a new manufacturing plant it planned to open in South Carolina.
DeMint is concerned about the outside influence of unions in this case. On his website he notes that in the same month that the NLRB began attacking Boeing the International Association of Machinists was bragging in its newsletters about the political influence it had bought with its campaign contributions.
In the same month that the NLRB decision on the Boeing case was made public, the IAM bragged to its members in their April newsletter that political contributions made by the union’s political action committee (PAC) “gains your Union access to officials, which is critical to get our issues addressed and ensure our input is heard.â€
The Senator wants to know if these donations by unions created a “pay to play” scenario with the NLRBs attempt to stall Boeing’s new start up in South Carolina, a state well known as a right to work state where unions have far less influence than Washington state where Boeing has its current plant.
Whether there was provable pay to play or not, the fact is that this move by Obama’s regulatory arm is an unheard of, outrageous attempt to oppress the freedom of an American business to operate in any American state in which it wants to operate. Further, it is plain that the sole reason Obama’s regulatory agency is doing this is to benefit big Labor — one of Obama’s biggest donors.
The Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI) today released the following statement in response to U.S. Senators putting forward legislation protecting workers and businesses in right-to-work states that are under attack by President Obama’s regulatory agencies, namely the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB):
“Actions by members of the U.S. Senate in defense of right to work are as warranted as they are necessary. Instead of working to fairly and impartially address disputes between unions and employers in the private sector, the National Labor Relations Board has turned into Big Labor’s advocacy arm,†said Fred Wszolek, spokesman for the Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI). “The policies advanced by bureaucrats at the NLRB threaten companies and will result in fewer jobs; therefore, they require the immediate attention of Congress. We hope more elected representatives take notice of the proposed legislation, stand up for the workers and businesses in their states, and send a message to President Obama’s labor board that their attacks against job creators will not be met with silence or inaction.â€
The Workforce Fairness Institute is an organization committed to educating voters, employers, employees and citizens about issues affecting the workplace. To learn more, please visit: http://www.workforcefairness.com.
The American Spectator has a little round up of some of the regulatory changes Obama is trying to push through to help the unions out. All stuff we’ve talked about here, but this is a nice round up of many of these efforts…
Unionization via Regulation
-By Ivan Osorio
Are unions desperate? When it comes to reviving their fortunes in the private sector, it certainly seems that way. Union leaders, unable to reverse decades of continued decline in private sector membership, are seeking political solutions to their ills — specifically, changes to labor law that would favor unionization.
They pinned their hopes on the election of Barack Obama as President, following the Democrats’ winning control of Congress in 2006. With Democrats running both elected branches of the federal government, pro-union legislation — including “card check” and bailouts for underfunded union pensions — seemed imminent in the early days of the Obama administration.
However, effective Republican opposition managed to hold back much of the unions’ legislative agenda. Then the Democrats’ trouncing in the 2010 midterm elections ended union hopes of pro-union labor law changes in Congress. Yet despite that huge setback, unions haven’t given up on politics, and instead have moved on to a different arena.
Obama will need organized labor’s support for his reelection campaign, so it’s in his self-interest to stay on the unions’ good side. This may explain why his administration has been pushing unionization through regulation — enacting regulatory changes favoring unionization without the consent of Congress. Considering the lengths to which the administration is going, it’s fair to ask: Is Obama desperate to give unions something?
Two key agencies in the administration’s efforts are the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the National Mediation Board (NMB). The NLRB supervises the National Labor Relations Act, which governs labor relations involving most private sector employees, while the NMB does the same for the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which governs railroad and airline employees…
Read the rest at The American Spectator.
Obama’s National Labor Relations Board made itself infamous not long ago by attempting to tell Boeing in what state it was allowed to build a new manufacturing plant. Indulging his penchant toward anti-business, anti-capitalist sentiment Obama decided that he was the final arbiter on where companies were allowed to move and set up shop. Boeing was evil, you see because they wanted to get out from under the business-destroying grip of unions.
The monsters at Boeing were “retaliating” against the unions said Obama and his NLRB. Boeing was moving its plant from Washington State to North Carolina because in NC the unions have less power. So, it’s the unionista in chief to the rescue of the jobs-killing unions. Boeing needs to be slapped down for it’s evilness, don’t you know?
But, here is where Obama’s ever present hypocrisy rears its ugly head once again.
As Senator Jim DeMint informs us, Obama’s own closest adviser was a member of the board of Boeing right at the same time it was implementing the decision that Obama thinks is so evil. And yet, Obama sees no reason not to accept Bill Daley — the adviser in question — as his White House Chief of Staff.
“If the president really believes Boeing broke the law as is contended by the National Labor Relations Board, he should ask his chief of staff [Bill] Daley to take a leave of absence,” DeMint said Thursday on a conference call with reporters, organized by the right-leaning Workforce Fairness Institute.
It isn’t just Daley, either…
“The president has since appointed the president of Boeing as his chairman of the Export Commission,” DeMint continued. “If he thinks Boeing has broken the law, he needs to make some changes.”
On one hand Obama tries to destroy Boeing with his anti-business, union-supporting tactics, saying Boeing is the most evil corporation in modern business. Yet he fills his own administration with members of that same company.
Obama’s hypocrisy knows no end.
But there is a method to Obama’s madness. If Obama uses his power to regulate to harm business, then invites the officers of that same business to fill slots in his administration, why he can then scare that business into doing what he wants them to do, he can then set up government approved status for Boeing with Obama in full control. We call it crony capitalism. It is the sort of thing that fascism is built on, too.
It’s hard to imagine Uncle Sam telling Walt Disney where to make movies or McDonald’s how many hamburgers to make, but if you take a look at the case of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) versus Boeing, you’ll see that the federal government is trying to do just that: dictate where and how private industry may do business. And it’s doing so to bolster one of President Barack Obama’s favorite special interests—labor unions.
To catch you up on the story, Boeing Corporation decided to build a new assembly plant in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to produce the 787 Dreamliner. The NLRB (which is responsible investigating unfair labor practices) got wind of the decision and last month filed a complaint against Boeing, alleging that the company decided to build the plant in South Carolina out of retaliation for union strikes at its Washington state facilities. Nevermind that Boeing actually added 2,000 jobs in Washington on this particular project.
South Carolina is a right-to-work state, meaning that Boeing can hire non-union workers. For fans of big labor (like President Obama and his allies), right-to-work states are a threat to unions’ dominance. (It’s worth noting that the NLRB today is composed of four members, three of whom are Obama appointees.)
The NLRB’s intentions, then, could be easily inferred. It is doing all it can to help unions at the expense of right-to-work states, corporations and at the end of the day, American workers. But in this case, we have even more than inference.
The Washington Examiner reports that a leaked NLRB memo “makes clear that President Obama and the radical labor advocates he put on it are embarked on a calculated campaign to make unionized firms even harder to manage.†The memo, which was obtained by the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky and James Sherk, “shows that the board seeks to elevate union officials to equal partners with executives in corporate boardrooms of all unionized firms.†The Examiner continues:
The memo instructs NLRB regional operatives to flag all cases in which unionized firms made relocation decisions without submitting detailed economic justifications to their unions. The board plans “case-by-case†reviews, followed by prosecutions of selected cases. The intended consequence is that all major business decisions will become subject to approval by unions.
Remarkably, the NLRB has attempted to deny that it’s telling Boeing how to make basic business decisions, despite all evidence to the contrary. In an interview with The Street, NLRB spokeswoman Nancy Cleeland said:
We are not telling Boeing they can’t build planes in South Carolina,†Cleeland clarified, in an interview. “We are talking about one specific piece of work: three planes a month. If they keep those three planes a month in Washington, there is no problem.†Beyond the ten planes, she said, Boeing could build whatever it wants in South Carolina.
So Boeing can make some planes, but not the planes the NLRB says it can’t make? That still sounds like the federal government dictating private business decisions, doesn’t it? However the NLRB wants to parse words or spin the story, it remains that its actions fly smack in the face of the rule of law. Simply put, the federal government does not have the legal authority to tell a company where it can expand its business. Sherk and von Spakovsky warn:
The NLRB’s decision to issue a complaint represents an unbridled, unauthorized, and unlawful expansion of the regulatory power of an executive agency. If allowed to stand, its actions threaten business investment and job creation as well as the employment of both unionized and nonunion workers.
Borrowing a page from the union intimidation playbook, the NLRB’s general counsel released a statement earlier this month warning Boeing not to “litigate this case in the media and public arena.†It is clear to the NLRB that its actions against Boeing would be unpopular nationally—and especially in South Carolina—so they do not desire attention or transparency. But as in most cases, when an agency like the NLRB wants the media to ignore a story, more media scrutiny is likely required.
Millions of Americans continue to suffer unemployment. Yet as businesses try to get back on their feet, the union-dominated NLRB is expanding its reach to win short-term gain for its big labor special interest allies at the economy’s expense. As the NLRB hurts businesses, job creation suffers right along with it. It’s time for Congress to take action to prevent the NLRB from inflicting even more damage on America’s economy.
