Sen. Alexander: Boeing expects to lose NLRB hearing

Airplane manufacturing company Boeing will likely lose a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board that begins Tuesday in Seattle, a key Republican senator said Tuesday.

The NLRB has filed a legal complaint against Boeing, alleging the company decided to build the facility in South Carolina in retaliation for labor strikes by workers at its Puget Sound plant near Seattle. The proceeding beginning Tuesday, which is expected to last several weeks, is beginning with a motion to dismiss the case by Boeing.

But Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said in a television interview Tuesday that neither he nor the company was optimistic about the hearing on the verge of beginning. 

"Boeing expects to lose the case today," he said on CNBC's Squawk Box. "So that means for next two years, we're going to have de facto law in this country that if you're a manufacturer that does not have a right to work law, you better think twice before you move or expand in a state with a right to work law.

"So where do you go?" he continued. "Mexico."

Alexander is the ranking Republican on the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.  He has co-sponsored legislation with South Carolina Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsay Graham, both also Republicans, to block the NLRB from initiating similar proceedings in the future.

But he said in the interview that bill would not likely be able to become law with Democrats still in control of the Senate and President Obama in the White House.
 
However, he argued that the stakes in the hearing that begins Tuesday were higher than Boeing's Charleston, S.C., plant.

"What we're trying to say is we're in the business of exporting airplanes, not exporting jobs," he said. "This hearing in Seattle today going to make harder for not only for Boeing but Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Volkswagen, to make in the United States what they sell in the United States." 

Alexander added that it might be easier for Boeing to move jobs oversees than the car companies.

"Boeing sells planes everywhere in the world," he said. "It can make planes everywhere in the world. It's got 160,000 employees in the United States. We want them to stay here."

The proceeding beginning Tuesday, which is expected to last several weeks, is beginning with a motion to dismiss the case by Boeing.