A while back, Governor Nikki Yada Yada from South Carolina took up the bow and arrow regarding the Boeing plant in South Carolina and the NLRB's decision to become "involved". Here is the simple tutorial. Boeing makes some commercial planes, the 787 "Dreamliner" is the latest edition. Demand for it is such that they - and this is their story and they are sticking to it - built a new plant in Charleston, S. Carolina to handle all the new demand. Washington, Boeing's home base, has unions. South Carolina is "right to work" and as a result one has a cheaper work force not tied to decades of union agreements. Fair enough and there are two sides to this sheep hunt, one that sides with management in trying to keep labor costs down and the other that sides with unions who feel that this "opening" is really a "transfer" and that Charleston will eventually replace Everett, Washington as the prime facility and the union will be meaningless.
Don't forget that Boeing has also tried to "outsource" to China and has parts once made here in the US, made all over the planet, and even though the outsourcing has to do with (in the case of sales of the Dreamliner to China) "made in China" policies, even the Bush administration felt that Boeing's moves were a bit off the charts. So back to the NLRB.
Boeing is all a tizzy at this threat to capitalism. The NLRB is, in Boeing's estimation, the original big government, lefty-commie-pinko worker tool, that is keeping Boeing from surviving. The NLRB sees it, of course, in a different light - that Boeing built an "end around" rope-a-dope plant in South Carolina and then got into a real or imagined squabble with its workers in Everett and in an effort to bust their chops, effectively set up a non-union parallel company that would be a big stick in negotiations in Everett - "hey, sign here or we take your job somewhere else". That kind of corporate heavy-handed behavior transgresses all kinds of regulations on how businesses treat unions and the NLRB had to, as is its charter and charge, step in. It didn't pick the battle - it came to its door.
I think that is the root of all this; the perception or belief that regulators go out hunting for wrongs to right. The IRS is accused of this all the time - just making stuff up - as is the EPA, the FDA, even the Education Department for heaven's sake. When companies like Boeing get involved in stuff like this - and it may all be perfectly as they claim - they have to realize that it is going to draw some attention. That in the same month's time, the WSJ carries two "advertorials" expressing the corporate point of view - one written by a small time governor and the other by the corporation expressing their outrage as to how badly they are treated - it just doesn't look too good.
As a taxpayer, I'm not on Boeing's side to begin with. They pay almost NO FEDERAL TAXES. The last 4-5 years have been a bonanza as they actually get money back that they didn't pay in...they make a tax profit. Overall their rates seem to be in tho 3.3% range; 1/10th of the corporate tax schedule so if the NLRB takes a look at them and says you might be a bad actor here in how you are treating your union workers and they scream "threat to capitalism" as a response, I might want to remind them that paying 3.3% in a bad year when they don't get money back that they didn't even pay in, is more of a threat to this country than a union ballot will or would ever be.
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