March 29, 2024

Boeing Plant Is Expected to Get Lift From House

The Republican-controlled House is expected to approve an unusual bill that would bar the labor board from pursuing the board’s pending action against Boeing, which Republicans have been denouncing day after day.

Republican leaders and business groups are vigorously backing the bill, saying it would safeguard the freedom of corporations to locate operations where they want.

But many Democrats and labor unions have denounced the bill, asserting that it would badly weaken an independent federal agency and be an improper favor to Boeing, a prominent political contributor.

The Republican bill, called “The Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act,” would prohibit the labor board from “ordering any employer to close, relocate or transfer employment under any circumstances.”

Republicans are angry that the labor board’s acting general counsel filed a complaint against Boeing in April, asserting that the company had built an assembly line in South Carolina to retaliate against unionized workers in Washington State for engaging in numerous strikes.

The National Labor Relations Act bars employers from taking any actions, including transferring an operation, in retaliation against workers for exercising their federally protected rights, including forming a union or going on strike.

Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia and the House majority leader, has condemned the board’s move, calling it an “overbearing action” that discriminates against right-to-work states in the South and makes it “nearly impossible” for Boeing to add additional workers. Several Republican presidential candidates have also criticized the complaint. For example, Mitt Romney visited South Carolina last Monday and called the move “an egregious example of political payback, where the president is able to pay back unions for the hundreds of millions of dollars they put in his campaign.”

The labor board is an independent agency that enforces federal laws regarding unionization and labor-management relations in the private sector. The president appoints its board members and general counsel, who is independent from the board and prosecutes cases claiming unfair labor practices.

The acting general counsel, Lafe E. Solomon, has asked an administrative law judge in Seattle to order Boeing to move the production line, which will build seven planes a month, from South Carolina to Washington State. The House bill to halt action against Boring has a retroactive provision that would nullify labor board complaints, like the Boeing one, for which “final adjudication” has “not been made.”

If the administrative law judge rules against Boeing, the company could appeal to the full board itself.

Mr. Solomon issued a statement Wednesday, saying his decision to issue a complaint against Boeing “was based on a careful investigation and a review of the facts under longstanding federal labor law.”

“The decision had absolutely nothing to do with political considerations, and there were no consultations with the White House,” he said. “Regrettably, some have chosen to insert politics into what should be a straightforward legal procedure. These continuing political attacks are baseless and unprecedented and take the focus away from where it belongs — the ongoing trial in Seattle.”

To prove that Boeing’s decision to assemble the 787 Dreamliners in South Carolina was retaliation, Mr. Solomon pointed to statements by top Boeing executives saying their dismay about past strikes was motivating them to open the production line in North Charleston. But Boeing officials say low costs were the reason they located the plant in South Carolina. Some assembly began there this summer.

Richard L. Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president, said the Republican bill was “sleazy legislation,” and added, “This is sweeping legislation that would gut the National Labor Relations Act and result in serious harmful changes to workers’ rights throughout the country.”

He said that if the bill passed, the labor board would be powerless to stop an employer from moving an operation to punish workers who staged a protest against unsafe conditions or sexual or racial discrimination.

Republicans have voiced confidence that the bill will pass the House, which they dominate. But Bill Samuel, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s legislative director, said defeat of the bill was possible, although he said the bill’s chances were not good in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.

Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, has strongly backed the bill. “No government board should have the authority to dictate where a private employer can run a business,” he said.

But Representative George Miller of California, the committee’s senior Democrat, said the bill was “the Outsourcers’ Bill of Rights.” He said that Republicans were pushing the bill “to change the rules midtrial on behalf of one Fortune 500 company.”

Aric Newhouse, senior vice president for policy and government relations with the National Association of Manufacturers, said the action against Boeing was hurting job creation and discouraging investment in right-to-work states.

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Leaving Labor Board, Liebman Responds to Critics

Conservative newsletters describe the presidentially appointed board as “Marxism on the march” and its members as “socialist goons.” Business groups denounce it as a handmaiden of union bosses, while Representative Michele Bachmann, a Republican presidential candidate, says she will shut down the agency if elected.

And Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, vowed to cripple the board by blocking confirmation of any future Democratic nominees after the agency’s top lawyer sought to block a Boeing plant in his state.

All this has deeply troubled Wilma B. Liebman, who constantly defended the board in her position as its chairwoman — a post she gave up on Sunday when her term expired. In an interview last week, Ms. Liebman insisted that the agency was misunderstood.

“The criticism is grossly out of proportion to what has happened and what has been done,” said Ms. Liebman, who was first appointed to the board by President Bill Clinton in 1997. “We knew we were going to have a boxing match, but we didn’t expect our opponents to come in with a baseball bat.”

The board’s role is to enforce the National Labor Relations Act, a 76-year-old law that sets the rules for unionization efforts and collective bargaining in the private sector. But in practice, it has always moved with the political tides. With its five members appointed by the president, the board has alternately leaned toward helping or hindering unions, depending on which party controlled the majority of seats.

Ms. Liebman said that under the Obama administration, the Democratic-controlled board had reversed only a handful of rulings made by the Republican-controlled board appointed by President Bush.

“The perception of this agency as doing radical things is mystifying to me,” she said. “The rhetoric is so overheated.”

Ms. Liebman, 61, said she asked not to be reappointed and was ready to move on.

In her view, a major reason for all the venom is that many people have never accepted the National Labor Relations Act (or the New Deal when it was enacted), and its embrace of unions and collective bargaining.

She said numerous law firms, business associations and partisan groups were forever warning about how dangerous the N.L.R.B. was because that would help them attract clients or contributions. She said that as soon as President Obama was elected, such groups began sending out alarmist warnings about all the evil the “Obama board” would do.

But many business associations and conservative groups argue that the labor board has lurched well to the left. For example, the agency is pushing a major rule change that would speed up unionization elections, which would most likely make it harder for employers to fight unionization and easier for unions to win organizing drives. Critics were also quick to denounce an action that the board took last Thursday: for the first time, it ordered all private sector employers to post notices about their employees’ rights to unionize and bargain collectively.

Peter C. Schaumber, an appointee of President George W. Bush who served on the board for eight years, said, “There has always been a certain arc in the board’s decisions when control changes between parties. Certain cases would go back and forth, but what we’re seeing now goes well beyond that arc.”

Generally considered an independent agency, the board typically has five members, who are appointed by the president, although with Ms. Liebman’s departure, the board will be down to three members. On Saturday, the Obama administration announced that the president had designated a current member, Mark Pearce, as the new chairman.

After Craig Becker’s appointment expires in December, the board will shrink to two members. If Republicans follow through on their threat not to confirm any Democratic nominees, the board will be largely paralyzed because it cannot legally make decisions with just two members, a situation it endured for 26 months beginning in 2008 when both parties blocked each other’s nominees.

The agency also has a general counsel, who is appointed by the president and is independent of the five-member board. The general counsel acts as the agency’s chief prosecutor, responsible for bringing civil cases against employers and unions that violate the National Labor Relations Act.

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