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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.
Bloomberg has another unions-are-mad-at-Obama story this week and, while there is no doubt that unions are a bit miffed at the big “O,” we should all be cautioned about where Big Labor will put its support in 2012. Miffed or not, and quite contrary to what Bloomberg wants you to believe, Big Labor will support Obama to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.
Still, it is interesting to see the unions whine about Obama. This president has been the biggest booster to Big Labor than any other president in history. The business punishing regulations alone that Obama has saddled upon this struggling economy makes his efforts more destructive and favorable to unions than any two past presidents combined.
Obama is using his regulatory powers to force contractors to pay unions off to get federal work even if those businesses aren’t members of any union, he’s sallied forth from his castle to inform businesses about where they will be allowed to build businesses, his crony capitalist efforts have put big businesses all across the country under his thumb, and he’s eased as many regulations that keep unions in line as he can… and he plans to do even more.
Yet, despite all this bending over backwards for Big Labor, the unions are upset with The One. Why they are mad is instructive.
You see, the reason these anti-business, socialist-minded union thugs are mad at Obama is because he could not give them the one thing they really, really wanted. They wanted card check so bad they could taste it. They wanted that Employee Free Choice Act so that they could eliminate the secret ballot in union elections — so that they would be free to intimidate workers at will — and they wanted the government to have the power to mediate union contracts by eliminating the power of business owners and perspective union members alike from having any influence.
On that last point, unions don’t mind handing over all power to arbitrate earlier to the government because they assumed they’d control the government with their millions of dollars in campaign donations to compliant Democrats in Obama’s administration.
But Obama has failed to get card check passed like he promised. So, since they didn’t get their one thing, Big Labor is mad at Democrats. Now they claim they will withhold their donations from Democrats running for federal offices in 2012.
Big threat, sure. But don’t believe them. It’s all sound and fury signifying nothing. Big Labor will support Obama and the Democrat slate regardless of how miffed they are today.
It is fun, though, to see them poking each other in the eye even if it won’t ultimately mean much.
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.
During a hearing last week on middle class employment, Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said that the Obama Administration’s policies are costing America good, middle class jobs.
Another day, another opportunity to slam the radical NLRB
MarathonPundit has a great post detailing some of the recent news stories about the overreach of the National Labor Relations Board, the rogue board headed by Barack Obama that is doing its level best to destroy our economy and business community in order to shore up rapacious union thugs.
Do go check it out.
