by Mike Hall, May 4, 2011
There was a time when Republicans claimed the “law and order” mantle was theirs and theirs alone.
But Republican senators’ recent cries of outrage against the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) issuance of a complaint against the Boeing Co. for trying to skirt federal labor law show they’re all for law and order as long as it’s not labor law.
With charges from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and others that the NLRB is acting like “thugs” from a “third world country” and is bullying poor little old Boeing, you’d think the labor agency was taking rubber hoses to some poor schoolyard weakling.
Here’s the case in a nutshell. In April, the NLRB issued a complaint against Boeing for moving a planned production line for its 787 Dreamliner from its unionized Puget Sound, Washington plant to a non-union facility in South Carolina. The complaint alleges that the move was in retaliation against the Puget Sound workers for having previously exercised their federally-guaranteed right to strike against Boeing and to prevent these workers from striking in the future.
According to the NLRB’s fact sheet on the complaint Boeing allegedly violated
two sections of the National Labor Relations Act by making coercive statements and threats to employees for engaging in statutorily protected activities, and by deciding to place the second line at a non-union facility, and establish a parts supply program nearby, in retaliation for past strike activity and to chill future strike activity by its union employees.
South Carolina senators and the right-wing noise machine went in full-gear hysteria over the NLRB’s complaint and say that along with so-called government thuggery, it’s an insidious attack on right-to-work laws.
But the NLRB charge has nothing to do with right to work. Boeing’s move is simply retaliation for workers’ exercising their rights by moving work to a state where workers’ rights and living standards are low.
Myrtle Beach Sun News columnist, Issac Bailey says South Carolina leaders leaders touted the state’s weak labor laws to Boeing.
They said it was an attack on “right-to-work” states—a term that guarantees no one here a job and in some cases even a fair hearing to keep the one you have. Right-to-work really means right-to-keep-unions-neutered and little else, which is precisely why Boeing chose South Carolina, and which is precisely how South Carolina leaders pitched the state to the company as it was considering a move.
But to hear our leaders scream last week—you should have seen some of the email blasts sent out to the media—you’d think Armageddon had begun prematurely.
Tom Wroblewski, president of IAM District Lodge 751 in Seattle, which represents Boeing workers, says:
Taking work away from workers because they exercise their union rights is against the law, and it’s against the law in all 50 states.
Looks like Republicans are all for law and order as long is not a corporate scofflaw caught on the wrong side of the law.
