Labor/Employment

The chairman of the National Labor Relations Board under the last Democratic administration says the current incarnation of the panel under President Obama has gone too far in its lawsuit against Boeing.

The NLRB has sued Boeing, which has been building 787 airplanes at its unionized plant near Seattle, arguing that the aircraft manufacturer is retaliating against strikes by unions in its home of Washington state by opening a plant to build more 787s in South Carolina.
 
South Carolina is a “right to work” state, where employers are not obliged to join a union.

Bill Gould, who led the labor board from 1994 to 1998 after being appointed to the panel by former President Bill Clinton, said he had never seen a case like Boeing's come before the NLRB during his tenure.

"The Boeing case is unprecedented," he said in an interview with Slate magazine. "I agree with much of what this board has done and is likely to do, but I don't agree with what the general counsel has done in the Boeing case.

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee said Tuesday that he was going to look into the changed National Mediation Board rules for airline and railroad employees.

The NMB changed the rules last year to ensure that absentee votes were not counted as votes against forming an union.

That was later undone by the House, but the proposed rule consumed debate over the Federal Aviation Administration authorization bill. It also caught the attention of President Obama, who promised to veto the entire FAA bill if the NMB rules were undone.

Now, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) says he wants to take a look at whether the NMB was trying to "advance a partisan policy agenda."

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) became the latest Republican presidential candidate to criticize the National Labor Relations Board's lawsuit against Boeing, calling its actions illegal and calling upon the government to defund the group if it persists in the suit.
 
The NLRB is suing Boeing, which has been building 787 airplanes at its unionized plant near Seattle, claiming that the aircraft manufacturer is retaliating against strikes by its Washington state-based union by opening a plant to build 787s in South Carolina.
 
South Carolina is a so-called “right to work” state, where employers are not obliged to join a union.
 
The lawsuit has infuriated South Carolina Republicans and, since South Carolina is an early 2012 primary state, it has also caught the attention of GOP presidential hopefuls.

Likely Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney compared the National Labor Relations Board's lawsuit to stop Boeing from building a new plant in South Carolina to the federal healthcare reform law.
 
While delivering a widely watched speech in Michigan Thursday, the former Massachusetts governor called the NLRB’s lawsuit "a power grab from states, with the federal government saying we know better than the state."
 
"That was the most recent [example]," Romney said during his remarks at the University of Michigan. "The most egregious example was the healthcare plan itself."

Boeing Vice President J. Michael Luttig told a Senate panel Thursday that the National Labor Relations Board has exceeded its authority by trying to block his company from building a new plant in South Carolina instead of its home state of Washington.

The NLRB is trying to win concessions for Boeing employees the union was not able to win, Luttig said during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The problem is, that is not the NLRB's job, Luttig told lawmakers Thursday.

"At bottom, the acting general counsel is seeking to change radically the balance between management and unions struck by the NLRA, as the Act has been interpreted for the last 75 years," Luttig said in remarks prepared for the committee. 

The Republican presidential candidates gathered for Thursday's debate in South Carolina should announce their positions on the fight between the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Boeing over a plant the company wants to build there, Gov. Nikki Haley (R) said.

Haley told audience members at the Peace Center in Greenville, S.C., that they should make sure the candidates say whether they agree with the NLRB that Boeing should not be able to build a new plant in South Carolina rather than labor-friendly Washington state, according to Slate.

The NLRB has sued to block Boeing's plans to build a plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state, saying the company made the decision in retaliation for strikes at its facilities in Washington. Boeing had planned to build 787 airplanes at a plant in Charleston, S.C., instead of in Seattle.

A group of Republican senators is pressuring the White House to remove two picks for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after the board filed suit against Boeing over its decision to move production work to a different state.

In a letter sent to the president Wednesday, 19 lawmakers accused the NLRB of conducting "an attack on millions of workers in 22 right-to-work states," calling the lawsuit a "government-led act of intimidation."

They threaten to use "all procedural tools available" to block a pair of NLRB nominees if the White House does not agree to withdraw the picks.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

An AirTran plane flying to Atlanta was diverted to South Carolina when one of its engines failed.

Bus and train operators in Minneapolis have signed a labor agreement for the next two years.

One railway in Florida may get the OK.

A Georgia man stole $2 million in goods being shipped via truck.

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. 

A former longtime chief of staff to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy who also managed Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign has been named political director for the United Auto Workers.
 
The UAW, one of the largest unions for employees of the Detroit-based U.S. auto companies, said Tuesday Mary Beth Cahill would run its Washington office. In addition to working for Kennedy and Kerry, both Massachusetts Democrats, Cahill worked in President Bill Clinton White House's Office of Public Liasion and at EMILY's List.
 
UAW president Bob King said that experience will make Cahill invaluable to the auto union, which has clashed with Congress during negotiations over the conditions of federal assistance sought by the struggling auto firms.