GOP senators respond to NLRB's Boeing decision

A pair of prominent Republican senators is firing back against a couple of recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decisions.

Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) plan to introduce legislation this week that would strengthen the protection of right-to-work laws, which say that employees cannot be required to join a union. Such laws are currently on the books in more than 20 states.

The measure is a response to some recent decisions from the NLRB, which filed a complaint against Boeing for moving a second production line from a union plant in Washington state to a non-union facility in South Carolina. 

The board also has signaled that it will push forward with lawsuits against Arizona and South Dakota over state constitutional amendments that say workers can form unions only through secret-ballot elections. 

Alexander and Graham’s legislation would look to ensure that NLRB or union contracts don’t supersede state law in right-to-work states. It would also bar the NLRB from moving forward with its case against Boeing, and from taking any similar action in the future. 

Nick Simpson, an Alexander spokesman, said the legislation would likely be a standalone bill and not an amendment to the small-business measure being debated in the Senate.  

“We’re not forcing anybody to be a member of a union,” Graham said of the new legislation on the Senate floor. “We’re just saying if a state like South Carolina and Tennessee chooses to be a right-to-work state, that cannot be held against them.”

For its part, the NLRB said in its complaint against Boeing that the company had made the second production facility non-union in South Carolina as retaliation for past strikes and to try to warn against future ones. 

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has also been sharply critical of the NLRB decision.