Update: Why Labor Laws Work for Everybody

I wrote a brief post back in October about the National Labor Relations Board lawsuit against Boeing for illegally moving production of its 787 Dreamliner from unionized Washington state to right-to-work state South Carolina in retaliation for Boeing's workers exercising their labor rights. 

The NLRB didn’t really have much choice in the matter, given that Boeing’s CEO pretty much had publicly declared that Boeing made its relocation decision in order to punish its workers for striking – which is flat-out illegal.  But, of course, the NLRB’s lawsuit became a cause celebre for the GOP presidential candidates, who thundered against this “government interference” with private enterprise, and the Republican-led House passed a bill to take away the NLRB’s power to enforce labor laws that regulate management.  (Presumably the NLRB would still retain the power to enforce the labor laws that regulate workers.)

But yesterday Boeing and its labor unions announced that they had reached a mutually satisfactory deal resolving this dispute.  Essentially, Boeing agreed to build its 737 Max aircraft in Washington, in exchange for the union dropping its opposition to Boeing assembling some 787 Dreamliners in non-union South Carolina.  If union members ratify the deal it will “alleviate the threat of strikes” and “pave the way for a planned jump in production by the aerospace giant.”  The union would also ask that the NLRB withdraw its complaint against Boeing.

This sounds like a win/win solution to me:  the unions and Washington state get to keep jobs and work in Washington, management gets to avoid labor strikes and a costly lawsuit, and South Carolina gets a new aircraft production facility.  Hooray!  Everybody wins!  (Except, perhaps, the non-union employees in South Carolina who will get paid less than their organized counterparts in Washington but - you know what? - those workers in South Carolina should unionize.  Oh wait . . . in a right-to-work state, they pretty much can't.  Bummer.)

But it should be stressed that one of the reasons a solution like this could be hammered out – maybe even the only reason a solution like this could be hammered out – is because the National Labor Relations Board still exists and still is charged with enforcing US labor laws, which are still on the books for very good reasons.  I don’t think there should be any doubt that if the NLRB had not been around to enforce the workers’ legal rights we wouldn’t be looking at a win/win situation like the one achieved yesterday.

So, yeah . . . labor laws are good laws.  They work for the benefit of everybody, and people who continue to insist that they should all be scrapped in the name of the mythical “free market” are fools and simpletons.

Addendum: The End of the Stealth War

This is kind of old news, but I was reminded of something earlier today and I suddenly flashed on how it ties into what I wrote last week about the end of the stealth war, in which I argued that America’s economic elite have been made to feel so secure about their position in this country that they no longer bother to hide the fact they declared war on the rest of us some time ago.

What I was reminded of was Boeing’s decision to move the production of its 787 Dreamliner from Washington state to South Carolina.  In explaining Boeing’s decision, its CEO Jim McNerney made an extended statement about moving the 787 Dreamliner work to South Carolina due to “strikes happening every three to four years in Puget Sound.”

Now, here’s the deal:  compared to most industrially advanced countries, the United States has very weak labor protection laws.  Had Boeing simply announced its intention to relocate its Dreamliner work to South Carolina, without explanation, it probably would have gotten away with doing so.

But one thing that absolutely is illegal for management to do is to make business decisions in retaliation against workers for exercising their rights to organize, strike and collectively bargain.  McNerney's statements pretty clearly indicate that this is precisely what Boeing was doing when it decided to move the Dreamliner to South Carolina and that is why the National Labor Relations Board ended up suing Boeing:  to enforce the nation's laws and to prohibit blatantly illegal conduct.

What strikes me as significant here is that McNerney must certainly have known that he was admitting to illegal activity when he made the statement that got Boeing sued, but he either didn’t care or he didn’t think anything would come of it.  And why would he do either?  The United States has spent decades doing everything it can to benefit management at the expense of workers, until we have been brought to the point where CEOs now feel safe boasting about the illegal things they do in order to disenfranchise those workers.

But the truly sad thing is that if the Republicans sweep Congress next year, McNerney’s assessment of his and Boeing's "untouchability" may eventually turn out to be correct.  Only a few weeks ago the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a bill specifically designed to prohibit the NLRB from blocking Boeing’s illegal action.

And this is what the end of the stealth war against working- and middle-class Americans looks like:  management unashamedly boasting about engaging in illegal activity, and their lickspittles in Congress amending the laws so that they can get away with it.