The questions raised by the board are legitimate ones. The problem is the remedy it has proposed, which would have the perverse effect of confining Boeing’s growth to its home region….
Federal law doesn’t stop Boeing from putting production lines where labor costs are lower. And the company’s defenders say that Boeing’s expansion in South Carolina hasn’t cost machinists jobs in the Puget Sound region; to the contrary, the company has added more than 2,000 jobs there. Nevertheless, the complaint raises a valid issue of whether the comments by Boeing executives crossed the line from being transparent about their motives to trying to intimidate workers to avert future strikes and hold down labor costs. That kind of intimidation is illegal.
“That kind of intimidation is illegal.”
If it is, it shouldn’t be illegal.
The stockholders of Boeing own Boeing, not the union members.
How would you like to have a hired hand working on your farm telling you that he has a right to tell what you can or can not do with your farm?
In the 1930’s there was a need and a reason fro the NLRB. It no longer exists. It is one of many deression era federal agencies that should be dismantled or at least heavily curtailed.
The Marxist govt is running/ruining the us economy.
I miss living in a country with a Constitution with a Bill of Rights. It was a noble experiment while it lasted.
4, me too. That’s why I am not interested in the 2012 elections. Marxist or Marxist Lite.
Amen, BrianInDioSpfd! This ties in with the Financial Times article just posted by Kendall.
Tea Party, where are you?
US citizen, where are you? Where is your outrage? How many millions fought for the many freedoms while you (and I) have squandered those and now have few freedoms left? Get off the couch, push away the computer and get out of your house, write a check, talk to your neighbors, fight you local school when they try to push leftist agendas. We can win this, we can be a free country again.
I have a better idea: teach your kids yourself to wade through the swamp of rhetoric from both sides so that when the corporatist apologists come along, they are just as prepared to refute them as they are the leftists.
David Keller’s comment (#2) is thoughtful and spot on. There really were terrible abuses against US workers at one time. Those particular ills have long since vanished. Honest sane public discussion by management of how to keep the company competitive and prevent flight of jobs overseas is not “intimidation” — the LA Times needs to read some history.
I live in WA state. The machinists’ union and our left-leaning, business-unfriendly state govt should have gotten the message loud and clear back when Boeing decided to shift its headquarters from Seattle, where it was born, to Chicago. Guess not.
The NLRB has a long history of politicized judgments. I agree with David that it has largely outlived its usefulness, though given the vampire-like tendencies of most bureaucracies, I don’t expect it to be dismantled anytime soon, certainly not by this administration. It’s much too handy a weapon at hand for them to use against uppity businesses.
If a business can’t make rational decisions as to siting production facilities that ensure its product is produced in a timely fashion, then it won’t be in business for long. Boeing has had huge headaches with offshore suppliers of 787 components, and needs reliable domestic production. Part of that reliability comes from a workforce that won’t strike at the drop of a hat.
Are the foreign auto makers that have production in right-to-work states next on NLRB’s hit parade?
[i]so that when the corporatist apologists [/i]
Let’s recount the evil deeds of Corporations:
1. Build products people want
2. Hire workers to make products
3. Pay taxes to local, state, and Fed govts
4. Create wealth
By all means, tell your children about this. Then show them pictures of Cuba and other similar worker paradises; let them make up their minds which picture they want to be a part of. Should be particularly instructional for very recent college grads who still haven’t landed a job interview (or a job!!).
As with the many other over-reaching intrusions by the current Administration, I find its arm twisting with Boeing to be unsettling.
However.
I also feel that some of the previous comments here are breathtakingly idyllic in their perception of free enterprise and its relationship with labor. I spent most of last year working [i]locum tenens[/i] at a unionized hospital in California. Prior to this position, I was hardly what one would consider a supporter of unions. That has not changed. [i]Everything[/i] was governed by the Contract, from which there could be no deviation. For example, as a nurse I was prohibited from mopping floors, removing garbage or making the OR bed once it was cleaned. Had I performed any of these duties, I would have been “taking someone’s job.” Thus, if it was a busy day or if housekeeping was short-staffed, it would sometimes take an hour for the room to be cleaned. In the meantime, we just stood around waiting…and waiting…and waiting. Efficiency wasn’t their strong suit.
On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve spent the last three months as a [i]locum[/i] in SC which is an “at will” state – though everyone says it’s a “right to work” state, which I think is a misnomer. There are no worker rights here. Irrespective of how long your shift is (for me, it’s 12 hours), employers are not required to provide any type of break – not even the standard off-the-clock meal break (I could count on one hand the number of meal breaks I’ve received since coming here). Additionally, employers can terminate your employment “at any time, for any reason or for no reason.” SC may be business-friendly, but it’s hardly a worker’s paradise, Thus, while I remain ambivalent about the necessity for unions, I [i]do[/i] believe that there needs to be some basic, statutory rights for workers.
RE: “Additionally, employers can terminate your employment “at any time, for any reason or for no reason.â€
I agree with that principle heartily. After all, we’re also able to leave employment at any time, for any reason or for no reason, and with no notice, unless we signed a contract stating otherwise [same for the employer].
Jobs are the private property of the employer. We’re not owed *their* job to give freely to whom they think serves the company. In fact, one of the most damaging things to the world of free and full employment is the notion that the job is somehow owned by the State rather than the actual corporate entity proferring it.
I also have a friend who works 12-hour shifts at three different hospitals in SC. She takes and eats her meals at each one. So at least three different hospitals in SC allow employees to eat their meals.
Spot on! The slowly sinking percentage of folks in unions are often shocked to find that in the real world employees can be terminated “at will” and of course can leave “at will”. I get the sense that the beltway crowd actually believes that employers have a social responsibility to hire people rather than a responsibility to their investors to make profits.
re 12: I believe that it is businesses that do these things, at least when they are competent; when they are not, they do all the opposites of all these things. And as far as Cuba is concerned, I do not think that turning the entire country into one big corporation is an improvement.
I can appreciate David Keller’s statement, whether or not I agree with it; in practice I really cannot offer a cogent opinion one way or the other. But I can appreciate it because it is a practical, realistic opinion– “realistic” not in how closely it represents the facts on the ground, but in how it admits that facts on the ground are relevant at all. The rest of the dogmatic defenses I have no use for, inasmuch as they pretend that a corporation as big as Boeing is not really that much like a garage simply magnified a hundred-thousand-fold. Size creates power differentials, and power does matter. Size creates diffusion of responsibility, and that matters too. And if we must get theoretical about it I’m willing to treat all corporate rights as fair game: rights are for people, and corporations are not people.
Union employees have contracts. They are not employees at will and they fully understand the difference. That is why they are in unions.
Corporations have duties to their shareholders, their creditors (including anyone in contract with them), and to society at large not to to be negligent or violate the law.
I’m not saying Boeing did anything they should not have, only that Corporations are not solely responsible to produce profits for shareholders. That mentality led Ford to decide to allow people to die in flaming Pintos because it was cheaper to pay off the families of the dead people than to fix the cars; and to the abuses of women, children and poor people that lead to the creation of the NLRB and OSHA in the first place.
#16 I agree Corporations should not be treated as persons, but our current Supreme Court does not. I suppose one upside (or downside depending on who you are) to the Corporations are people too argument, is they can be charged with crimes, like murder; which of course makes no sense unless one is saying we can kill the company in response to criminal activity; and since the only way to kill a corporation is to seize its assets and revoke its articles, I guess that what we can do if a corporation commits a crime.
Jobs are not property. No one owns a job. Jobs are a combination of property and labor. You can own the things that people need to perform a job, and you can control access to those things. I’m not saying that is materially different in effect but it is certainly different in traditional notions of property law. The company owns the property, but not the labor. The employee supplies the labor. The job would not exist without either. Labor unions are a group of people banding together to sell labor, at a higher price than each person could sell the labor on his own.
Today’s Washington Post has an interesting editorial on this issue. If I were more skilled, I would furnish the link. As I am not, perhaps someone else can toss it on the pile.