NLRB and Labor Law: Discussion on C-Span

Labor law professor Charles Craver of George Washington University spoke this morning on C-Span’s Washington Journal program concerning the NLRB-Boeing controversy.

Dr. Craver’s talk is highly informative about labor law generally and should be watched by anyone with an interest in the Boeing controversy. It cannot be embedded here, you must go to C-Span to watch it.

 

Dr. Craver talking on C-Span, Tuesday, June 14 on labor rights in the US and specifically about the Boeing situation in Charleston, South Carolina.

Another link: Dr. Charles CraverWashington Journal for Tuesday, June 14 | C-SPAN

Boeing has been planing on expanding its North Charleston plant in order to build the 787 Dreamliner there.   IAM brought a complaint against Boeing under the National Labor Relations Act, asserting that the shift in production is an attempt to punish the union for past strikes.  There is some evidence that this is correct; Boeing and South Carolina politicians openly stated as much and the NLRB is currently considering the matter.  Union rights being what they are in this country, many people don’t know what the NLRB is or what it does.

The interview with Dr. Craver does provide some much needed context.   It does not however, provide the kind of information that will educate South Carolinians about their rights as workers.   Freedom of assembly is compromised in South Carolina by the state government’s hostility to worker self-organization.   Naturally, we haven’t heard anything about repealing the Taft-Hartley Act from the South Carolina Democratic Party.  We won’t until there is a national movement among working people to protect the right to organize in every county in the country.

We have heard a lot of grandstanding from right-wing SC politicians.  Jim DeMint has called the NLRB “thugs” and “gangsters”, using union-busting language right out of the 1930s.    DeMint really hates the idea of collective action, so his opposition is no surprise.   Nikki Halley and the entire South Carolina political establishment is completely hostile to working people organizing and standing up for themselves.  These politicians have succeeded in framing the issue in such a way that I have heard even progressives in SC agonize over a perceived conflict between respecting worker’s rights and bringing jobs to SC.

Dr. Craver is a professional arbitrator, with a dispassionate view of the law, as should be evident from his digression on the NFL labor dispute.   Those of us who support organized labor can learn a lot about what is at stake here and how the law works in practice.

This is just an informed perspective.  The International Association of Machinists have released an open letter to the workers of Charleston explaining their position and combating some of the anti-union attacks from DeMint, Lindsey Graham and the rest.

Click to go to PDF of IAM President to Charleston Workers.

One thing that Dr. Craver does mention – briefly – is that Boeing’s plant in North Charleston was represented by the International Association of Machinists until a decertification election last year.   There is evidence that Boeing orchestrated the decertification campaign, in order to create an non-union plant.   If this was in discrimination against the union going on strike in the past, then it would be the illegal under labor law.

South Carolina progressives and the SC Carolina Green Party support the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act and the right of all workers to organize themselves however they see fit.   The State of South Carolina should be encouraging civic and workplace participation, not subjecting workers to the dictates of their employers.South Carolina progressives and the SC Carolina Green Party support the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act and the right of all workers to organize themselves however they see fit.   The State of South Carolina should be encouraging civic and workplace participation, not subjecting workers to the dictates of their employers.

If the Obama Administration Caves in to Conservatives, Labor is History

Webmaster’s Note: There are many signs that the labor movement is growing disenchanted with the Democratic Party. While this sort of thing has happened before, notably after NAFTA under Clinton, there are factors that point to a real break. Never before has corporate money dominated the two major parties as it does today. Labor unions seem very much inclined to start running candidates for local and state office in an attempt to break down the embargo on pro-working class candidates in most states.

This initiative will come from the labor unions themselves. What are the opportunities presented to a progressive and ballot-qualified party like the South Carolina Green Party? We can certainly help with an endorsement for a state level office. The challenges on a local level, include an absence of organization sufficient to overcome the straight ticket voting, certainly are serious.  Yet, the times may be changing.  The interest in local and independent politics from the nation’s largest progressive force is certainly welcome.

By John Logan, writing for the Houston Chronicle.

The left and right in American politics increasingly inhabit different planets. Perhaps this is nowhere more apparent than when it comes to labor issues. For the left, there is only one issue worthy of discussion — the no-holds-barred assault on public sector bargaining rights in Republican-controlled states all across the country. For the right, public sector unions remain an important target, but the real story lies elsewhere — the “astonishing abuse of power” by the Obama National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which has just issued a complaint against Boeing for expanding production at a nonunion plant in North Charleston, S.C., rather than at a unionized one in Everett (near Seattle), in Washington state.

Several aspects of the Boeing dispute stand out:

First, there is the fury that the NLRB complaint has aroused in conservative circles. Seldom slow to anger, conservative pundits and politicians have gone apoplectic with rage on this in a way not seen for years. Jim DeMint, a Republican senator from South Carolina, fumed that the Obama NLRB was “acting like thugs … from a Third World country.”

DeMint called the decision a “government-led act of intimidation” against firms that choose to manufacture in the nation’s 22 right-to-work states – which outlaw union security agreements – such as South Carolina. The state’s other senator, Lindsey Graham, called the complaint “politics run amok.” Right-wing pundits have also expressed their outrage at the NLRB’s action, calling it the “persecution of Boeing” and accusing the board of helping “forced-unionism states” (non-right-to-work states like Washington) to “build a regulatory Berlin Wall around their borders to keep their businesses from leaving.” And they have demanded that the Obama administration act decisively to rein in this “out-of-control” government agency.

None of these commentators have denied that Boeing engaged in the activity that is at the heart of the NLRB complaint. Boeing made the decision to expand production in South Carolina, it explained, in order to avoid the possibility of a strike at its unionized Washington plant. Rather, they believe that the law should not apply to a powerful corporation that is creating jobs in America rather than shipping them overseas. Boeing, of course, has already shipped thousands of jobs overseas – particularly to China, which is an increasingly important buyer for its planes – with its factories in Washington and South Carolina acting as final assembly plants for an increasingly complex global supply chain. Boeing also received enormous economic and tax incentives from South Carolina for agreeing to locate there and will benefit from lower labor costs in its nonunion South Carolina workforce.

One must also put this self-righteous rage in perspective: At a time when unions are in imminent danger of going the way of the dinosaurs, South Carolina has one of the weakest labor movements, with private sector union membership currently standing at 2.8 percent. Even by the extreme standards commonplace in the U.S., anti-union sentiment in South Carolina is intense. The new governor, Sarah Palin favorite and possible Republican vice presidential candidate Nikki Haley, stated shortly after taking office that she would actively seek to keep unions out of the Palmetto State. Appointing a lawyer from a well-known union avoidance firm to head her Labor Department, Haley announced: “We’re going to fight the unions, and I needed a partner to help me do it.”

Finally, in retaliation against the NLRB’s efforts to enforce the law, congressional Republicans are threatening to cut its funding and gearing up to oppose the reappointment of its Democratic members, who are among the most accomplished members of the agency in decades. This is not the first time that Republicans have declared war on a Democratic NLRB but the vitriol in the “job destroying” accusations and threats of retaliation are more extreme this time round.

The past few months have witnessed a ferocious assault on public sector unions at the state level. Now conservatives have extended that attack to the one federal agency that still cares about the violation of fundamental labor rights. If conservatives succeed in cowing the Obama administration on this issue, we may indeed be witnessing the last days of the labor movement in the United States.

Logan is professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University. Between 2000-2008, he was an assistant and associate professor of management at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

This editorial was originally published by the Houston Chronicle here:  http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/7575326.html

The International Association of Machinists maintains a page on the Boeing dispute here: http://www.goiam.org/tags.php/boeing-dispute