Newspapers: Rep. Issa right to subpoena documents in NLRB Boeing case

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is right to issue subpoenas for documents related to the National Labor Relations Board’s legal complaint against airplane manufacturer Boeing, a pair of newspaper editorial boards said this week.

Issa has launched an investigation into the labor oversight panel’s case against Boeing. The NLRB argues that Boeing decided to build a plant in South Carolina to retaliate for labor strikes at its existing facilities in Washington state.

Issa has said the case appears politically motivated, an idea with which the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review agreed.

“By subpoenaing documents from the National Labor Relations Board’s lawsuit against Boeing Co., Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is appropriately pressuring the Democrat-dominated NLRB, which is intolerably pressuring businesses’ freedom to locate where they wish,” the paper opined Thursday.

 “Rep. Issa is right: The NLRB lawsuit does interfere with Boeing’s ability to decide where it does business,” the paper continued. “What’s worse is the precedent that would be set if the lawsuit succeeds, which would enable government to usurp all U.S. companies’ right to decide — for themselves — where they do business.

“That no doubt would please the anti-business Obama administration, its Big Labor backers and their NLRB minions. But this insidious form of top-down, centrally planned, leftist industrial policy would lead to economic catastrophe. Clearly, Issa’s battle is worth fighting.”

The Las Vegas Review-Journal agreed in an editorial of its own Wednesday, writing that “President Barack Obama offered a national pep talk Monday, the first business day after Standard & Poor’s dubbed the debt-ceiling deal a tepid attempt at fiscal restraint and responded by downgrading the federal government’s bond rating.

“The important question, however, is whether this administration is actually willing to let those ‘adventurous entrepreneurs’ and ‘innovative companies’ prosper and create new jobs. When you consider what’s going on with Boeing, it sure doesn’t appear so.”

Both papers’ editorial boards are known for being right-leaning. The Tribune-Review is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, who is a major funder of groups that attack Democratic candidates and office-holders. 

Boeing opened its new 787 plant in Charleston, S.C., last month. If the NLRB complaint is ultimately successful, however, the company could be forced to build the planes it intends to build there in Seattle instead.


An administrative law judge in Seattle dismissed a Boeing motion to dismiss the case at the end of June.

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