Combine this with our high corporate taxes and people actually wonder why companies move overseas and people are out of work?

Sometimes by favoring a narrow constituency, the federal government can cause economic devastation for a company or a state and even encourage companies to manufacture outside the United States. In terms of sheer economic stupidity, the Obama Administration committed an economic felony when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered Boeing to shutter a spanking new $2 billion facility that would have created 1,000 much-needed new jobs in South Carolina.

Last week, the NLRB told Boeing that it could not open the facility it had spent three years creating to build its new Dreamliner series of airplanes. The NLRB did not deem the plant unsafe or harmful to South Carolina workers. The NLRB simply said that it could block Boeing from using the new plant as Boeing’s decision to locate it in South Carolina was in part based on a desire to avoid work stoppages and strikes, and this rationale was harmful to unions and thus an illegal act.

Never before has the federal government told a company it may not relocate within the United States. Never before has the statute used been interpreted to affect a decision on where a product is made. Never before has the Constitutional goal of easing interstate commerce been so trampled by a formal act of the federal government.

Why was this done?

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers asserts that during a 2008 strike at Boeing’s factory in Seattle, company executives threatened they would open their next assembly line in a right-to-work state in retaliation for workers walking off the job.

This despite the point made in the first article that Boeing can’t make enough of the planes at their Seattle factory, so they had to add a plant somewhere else. This couldn’t possibly be related to elections next year, could it?




  1. GF says:

    And exactly what did this accomplish?

    In an irony of ironies the union and the NLRB probably uses Apple products made by Foxcon.

  2. Lou Minatti says:

    “Go ahead, Boeing, make your planes in Communist China. See if they stay in the air without crashing.”

    McDonnell-Douglas did just that years ago and Airbus has followed suit, licensing the Chinese to build A320s. So, yes. This will force Boeing’s hand, resulting in fewer American jobs and more foreign jobs. Smooth move, union labor bosses.

  3. Come to Canada and you can get an idea of what goes on the minds of the leftists / union people coordination here
    Its all about the union cause – if the company shuts down as a result – who needed those lousy capitalists / upper company management etc etc
    Yet all the big paying jobs are gone
    All we have now for the most part is big box stores with menial sales jobs selling mainly Chinese made goods
    In the end Canadians to a great extent fall into two groups – high paid government bureaucrats who care about nobody but themselves and sit and make colored graphs and charts about how well they are doing and why they should be paid more and have more benefits – at the extent of the rest of us slaves
    How sad
    And yet the civil servants break all privacy laws that we are threatened with and held to no account what so ever
    Welcome to this world America
    This will all end with crying

  4. Thomas says:

    #6
    Just taking the story as reported, the NLRB quite rightly is denying an illegal retaliation by Boeing against union activity.

    What are you smoking? Since when does the Federal government have the authority to deny a corporation from putting another plant in another State (that wants it btw) simply because they *feel* it is retaliation against the union? Sheesh. So much for State rights. Patrick Henry is rolling over in his grave. Frankly, this suit hasn’t got a chance in hell in going through. Federal regulators are not given the authority to dictate to a corporation where they may or may not put their plants.

  5. Ah_Yea says:

    Taxed Enough.

    Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

  6. Steve S says:

    Sorry but unless there is something else that I am not seeing, the NLRB is way way out of line here. This is the kind of oppressive bullshit that make citizens not trust the people that run their government.

  7. bobbo, Republicans are out to Destroy Unions and the Working Man says:

    #41–Thomas==as I stated: taking the article at face value. I do “assume” the NLRB powers do reach to the action they have taken–why assume otherwise? Do you have any law or case on point saying their authority doesn’t go this far? First Principle: Employers cannot RETALIATE against employees for their legal union activity EXPRESSLY such as threatening to shut down a plant. From that principle its not hard to assume the NLRB can prevent the opening of a new plant that would lead to the shut down of the first plant. What the employer can do as an INDEPENDENT/UNRELATED business decision is something they can not do in retaliation.

    It’s never surprising what people will say in the heat of battle. Lots of stupid things are said. But cell phones and recorders are ubiquitous now. Hard to lie/defend when the truth is on tape.

    American workers–fighting for the scraps while Corporations constantly leveraging their positions for Government Welfare aka “tax breaks.” Its an outrage.

  8. lil*bo*peep says:

    Interesting:
    “Obama’s chief of staff, Bill Daley, was on Boeing’s board of directors in October 2009 when it voted unanimously to build the Dreamliner’s new final-assembly line at the North Charleston site”

  9. sargasso_c says:

    Tax payers funded this disastrous plane. Boeing wants out of the project but can’t just do that. The union may have given them the excuse they needed. Outsourcing manufacturing abroad – is not going to happen if Boeing wants a bigger bite of military and space.

  10. Sunshiny Optimist says:

    America was great once. Now it is just a huge, bloated, rotting corpse. Cause of death? Greed, graft, corruption, endless infighting and beancounting and nitpicking. Well, that’s just the nature of government, and the ideology doesn’t really matter. It’s why all empires eventually die. They get fat and stupid and they rot from within.

    Too bad. Well, slap another coat of lipstick on this pig and maybe you can get another ten years out of it, huh?

  11. deowll says:

    I’m sure this choice is going to have an impact on the next election.

  12. MikeN says:

    Message to other companies, Don’t come here, don’t expand here, and don’t stay here.

  13. Thomas says:

    #44
    Yes, as a matter of fact I do:

    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

    The First principle concept does not extend to impeding expansion of production facilities even if it would hurt existing labor. In fact, Boeing could move their entire production overseas and NLRB could not stop them. A company is at liberty to move its operations to locations where the labor laws benefit their stockholders and NLRB has no authority to do anything about it. The whole “retaliation” angle is a red herring. Boeing only needs to show that the new plant will benefit the company in any way and that will be the end of the story.

    Just a corporations compete, so does labor and so do governments. No one seems to mind when a corporation goes out of business due to competition but they have a cow when one government loses businesses due to competition from another government.

  14. bobbo, Republicans lie about everything all the time says:

    Thomas==quoting the constitution without court cases closely matching the details of a situation is childish.

    Simply saying the opposite of an argument is not analysis, it is childish.

    Are you the other thomas? because I haven’t seen you be so irrelevant before.

    I will agree nothing can stop a company from dissolving its USA based production and going overseas but the NLRB is NATIONAL in scope. NATIONAL means anywhere in the USA and not INTER-national==by definition.

    sill rabbit.

  15. RSweeney says:

    Just wondering if any more of you Obama voters are willing to admit what a terrible mistake you made in your choice.

  16. Thomas says:

    #51
    The Federal government does not have authority to stop a company from setting up a production facitiliy in whatever State they want. The States do have that authority. The Federal government does not. So, trying to suggest that I have to show a law that says they do not shows a profound ignorance of the Constitution. The Constitution outlines the limits on Federal power and anything else is a power of the States. Thus, the onus is on you to show that the Federal government does have that authority. There is nothing here that relates to interstate commerce. This is purely a dispute between Boeing and its union and Boeing is under no obligation to restrict its expansion into States that its current union likes.


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