Tue. May 10, 2011
The recent NLRB complaint against the Boeing Company is quickly becoming a cause célèbre among right-to-work zealots who are calling for extreme measures to “reign in” the federal agency charged with protecting U.S. labor laws.
Behind a fog of misinformation, the right-wing media echo chamber is reverberating with claims that the NLRB is undertaking an “unprecedented” campaign against right-to-work states while attempting to tell a large corporation where they can and cannot locate their operations.
The actual complaint, issued by the NLRB on April 20, does not seek to have Boeing’s South Carolina facility closed, nor does it address right-to-work legislation in any state. Rather, it seeks to halt the transfer of a specific piece of production work due to allegations that the transfer was unlawfully motivated.
In an article published in the Huffington Post, IAM General Counsel Chris Corson rejects the effort to cast the dispute as anything other than a matter of facts, evidence and the law.
“Commentators cry that this case is just a Democratic administration favoring labor. But the rights at stake in this case belong to workers in every state, regardless of their politics and even regardless of whether they are unionized,” said Corson. “Retaliation against workers for exercising protected rights is as unlawful in South Carolina as it is in Washington. The NLRB should enforce the law whenever and wherever retaliation against workers takes place.”
