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Pasco County News | Breaking News

NLRB’s rogue mission threatens Florida, too

Posted May 10, 2011 by Tom Jackson

Updated May 10, 2011 at 11:05 PM

Like South Carolina, Florida is a right-to-work state. Also like South Carolina (and Tennessee and Texas), in their most recent election, Florida elected business-friendly candidates to state and federal lawmaking positions, with an eye to enhancing the job-creation atmosphere in the Sunshine State.

Clearly, then, Floridians have a keen interest in the recent activities of the unelected and unaccountable National Labor Relations Board, a rogue attempt to block Boeing from opening a new Dreamliner plant in North Charleston. The factory, representing a $2 billion investment and thousands of high-skilled, high-wage jobs, is precisely the sort of project Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-led Legislature have in mind luring here. Alas, left unchecked, the NLRB’s unwarranted intrusion almost certainly will have a chilling effect.

South Carolina’s rookie governor, Nikki Haley, and not-to-be-trifled-with Sen. Jim DeMint, are pushing back, but hard, as noted by National Review Online’s Andrew Stiles (“The GOP vs. The NLRB”).

At a press conference (Tuesday) at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, GOP senators joined South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (R.) in denouncing the general counsel’s actions and calling on the president to speak out on the matter. “This goes against everything we know our American economy to be,” Haley said. “For the president not to weigh in on this and not to say that this is going to be harmful is a problem.”

The NLRB complaint alleges that Boeing’s decision constitutes illegal “retaliation” against a machinist union in Washington State. But Haley, along with South Carolina senators Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, is outraged and sees the decision as a threat to her state’s economy. “This is personal,” Haley said. “When you go after a corporate citizen in South Carolina, it is personal to me.”

Graham decried the NLRB’s “unbelievable attack” on Boeing, which, he said, is merely seeking out the best environment in which to do business. “It’s not like Boeing just picked up and came to South Carolina without any discussions,” he said. “This was a long, hard decision by the Boeing company, and they made a good business decision after a lot negotiations with many people. . . . Under the law, they have the right to do this.”

Boeing has already invested about $2 billion in the South Carolina plant, and now faces millions more in legal fees as a result of the NLRB complaint. The company has pointed out that no jobs or benefits have been cut in their original Puget Sound plant. In fact, more than 2,000 new positions have been created there since the decision to place the new plant in South Carolina.

DeMint called it “absurd” that in a country like the United States — a beacon of free enterprise — an unaccountable, unelected government agency could potentially undermine thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investment. “This is something you would expect in a Third World country,” he said. “It is thuggery at its best, and we cannot stand for it here in this country.” He argued that the NLRB likely knew full it could not possibly win with such a spurious argument, but was simply trying to raise the cost (i.e. legal fees) for other companies who might follow in Boeing’s footsteps.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.), a former governor, said concern over the NLRB’s overreach extended well beyond South Carolina, which is why he is drafting legislation — dubbed “The Right to Work Protection Act” — to clarify existing law to not only forestall the NLRB’s pending action against Boeing but also to prevent any similar attempts against other companies. Alexander expects significant bipartisan support.

Another important aspect of the bill would protect an employer’s free-speech right to “have honest negotiations without fear that comments will be used as evidence in an anti-union-discrimination case.”

A question for Floridians, then: Should Republican legislation in the U.S. Senate gain momentum, how will Florida’s senior partner, Democrat Bill Nelson—facing reelection in 2012—respond? Will he line up (as usual) with his party’s monolithic pro-union leadership, or will he be guided by more practical considerations back home—the knowledge that several thousand Floridians with remarkable technical skills face the loss of jobs as NASA winds down its shuttle mission at Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center?

Haley isn’t waiting for legislation. She wants to hear from President Obama, now.

Haley took a more aggressive tack, urging Obama to overhaul his attitude toward the business community. “All he’s doing right now is creating best friends with every other country in the world — they are loving him right now — because he is forcing business to go out of our country and he is keeping business from coming in,” she said. “We need him to love this country, we need him to understand what he’s doing to this country. He absolutely owes the American public a response.”

Florida’s leadership should find out where Bill Nelson stands on this, as well.