The extremism of the current NLRB was on full display yesterday with the filing of a complaint by Lafe Solomon, the agency’s Acting General Counsel against Boeing.
The complaint challenged Boeing’s right to build a facility in South Carolina – a right-to-work state. According to Solomon, Boeing acted out of “anti-union animus” because some of its executives publicly explained that one of the reasons for the facility in South Carolina was to prevent interruptions in production due to strikes.
The complaint fails to mention that Boeing’s decision was made only after it sought in good faith to secure assurances from the union against future strikes and work stoppages. Furthermore, its decision to locate a second line in another state did not violate any of the provisions of its collective bargaining agreement.
As the Wall Street Journal said this morning:
There are plentiful legal precedents that give business the right to locate operations in right-to-work states. That right has created healthy competition among states and kept tens of millions of jobs in America rather than heading overseas.
Even though the General Counsel’s press release refers to this as a “transfer of work,” it is in fact a second production line that is taking no work away from the work already being performed in Seattle. There is no precedent for a complaint in this area.”
Indeed, there is not. The cases Solomon cites are clearly distinguishable. They are election cases. In one, the union’s election loss was overturned because the employer cited concerns about potential disruptions of work if the employees elected a union. In the other, the employer threatened to close the plant if the employer voted for the union. Here, the union was already in place.
Unions engage in corporate campaigns to destabilize a company’s business operation solely to extract a neutrality card check agreement or other concessions and the NLRB says nothing about it. Here a company exercises its right to open a new facility in a right-to-work state in order to remain competitive and avoid business interruptions and it allegedly commits an unfair labor practice.
The American worker is not stupid. Is it any wonder why unionization in the private sector is down to less than 7 percent?
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