Boeing vs. the NLRB: 2012 Sleeper Election Issue

From BOEING BOEING starring Jerry Lewis and Tony Curtis

Barack Obama has been able to disguise, misname, spin and otherwise explain away his socialist policies so that they may make some sense to those who aren’t really paying attention. But he can’t do that with what his NLRB is doing to Boeing. The hubris of it all; the arrogance in its execution; and the complete political stupidity accompanying it is staggering. Nothing in his presidency, including health care, TARP, the takeover of GM and Chrysler, the suicidal spending, and the bowing the Arabs can come close to how the Boeing debacle shows the nature of the man, and its simplicity in understanding his beliefs.. It will be the Waterloo of the Obama presidency.

The Dreamliner is Boeing's entry into a new class of fuel efficient airplanes. It delivers 20% fuel economy, and is destined to be one of its most popular and successful aircraft. It built a new plant in South Carolina after a series of labor disputes with its union in its plants located in Seattle, Washington. It initiated, with no compulsion, discussions with the machinists union to possibly build the plant in Washington State. What is got instead were three union demands: 1) A seat on Boeing’s Board of Directors; 2) A promise that any new plants would not be built anywhere but in Washington State; and 3) A no layoff policy for all current workers. Boeing couldn’t live with that, and neither could any other company in the United States. Boeing decided to build its plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, and spent a billion dollars on the complex over the past two years.

It was set to open the facility, and was beginning to hire workers, when the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Boeing claiming building the plant in a Right to Work state was an intimidation of the union. Boeing is now prohibited from starting production in the plant unless it is unionized. Boeing has obviously started legal proceedings to prevent this from happening. It expects to be lost in the agency bureaucracy and then the federal courts for at least three years.

The attorneys behind this action are all Obama appointees. The lead attorney is an Obama “recess” appointee who has yet to be confirmed by the House of Representatives. When called to testify in front of Congress last week, he was smarmy and arrogant. He is the worst of what the Obama administration has to offer.

The United States is basically divided in half along a line roughly equivalent with Mason Dixon line. Those to the north are union states. Those to the south are Right to Work states. As everyone knows, what manufacturing is left in the United States has moving from the northern states to the southern states. Ohio, for example, has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs over the last ten years….not to Mexico or China….but to Tennessee and Georgia.

As in all things socialist, Obama has decided the solution to the problem is coercion. Simply decree that it is illegal to build a factory in a right to work state if you are operating in a union state. He will be the arbiter to where a business may or may not open a plant.

Of course, as in all things Obama, he has not taken the consequences of such a policy beyond the immediate political gratification he hopes is blown back from the machinists union. Boeing is an international corporation with plants all over the world. It employs 150,000 people worldwide. When Boeing builds its next plant, you can bet your bottom dollar it won’t be in the United States. It will build it in Mexico or China…with China being the odds on winner. China will ultimately be the largest consumer of Boeing’s products, and it is just as easy to build them there than build them here.

Several union leaders know this, and have spoken up against this action by Obama’s rogue NLRB. They know that NO new business will start up in a union state if it binds them to that state for the rest if that business' existence. It in effect guarantees that all future new start ups will be in Texas or Alabama or Georgia or Tennessee; not Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan or New Jersey. Capital is fungible. It will always seek the past of least resistence.

This is a simple issue, but absolutely reflects the attitude of this administration. This is a message the vast number of independent voters will understand and will turn into the single, biggest campaign issue in the 2012 election.