This Is What We Get For Not Paying Attention

Following up yesterday's post about the National Labor Relations Board prosecuting a dead guy:

There's other skullduggery afoot at the NLRB. Most of you will recall the outrageous action taken by the NLRB in opposition to Boeing opening a new production facility in South Carolina. A brief summary:

• Boeing's main facilities are located in Washington. The plant is heavily unionized.
• Union strikes over the last several years have caused Boeing to miss important deadlines in the delivery of new planes.
• Boeing is expanding its facilities to build a fleet of next-generation airplanes - the 787 Dreamliner.
• As part of that expansion, Boeing built a new factory in South Carolina, a right-to-work state.
• The NLRB alleges that Boeing is moving work from Washington to South Carolina to punish union members for striking, which is a violation of labor law.
• This ignores the fact that Boeing plans on hiring more workers in both WA and SC to build the 787s and other planes.

Even the normally liberal Washington Post has criticized the NLRB's move.

The allegation that the company “transferred” jobs out of state is unconvincing because the jobs in South Carolina are new. The company has not cut jobs in Washington, nor has it demoted or slashed the wages of union workers. Boeing has added about 3,000 — albeit temporary — jobs in Washington since it announced its South Carolina plans and says it is likely to add more to keep up with demand for its commercial airliners.

Employers who engage in unfair labor practices should be penalized. But the NLRB’s move goes too far and would undermine a company’s ability to consider all legitimate factors — including potential work disruptions — when making plans. It also substitutes the government’s judgment for that of the company. This is neither good law nor good business.

Speaking of that which is neither good law nor good business, the NLRB is launching another assault on American businesses.

Even as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is pilloried by the editorial pages of mainstream newspapers from coast to coast for its ridiculous efforts to tell Boeing how - and where - to create jobs, the captured agency is already warning of its next target: the 6 million businesses, large and small, within the board’s grasp.

On July 18, the NLRB is holding a hearing on its proposal to overhaul virtually the entire manner and set of rules by which union-representation elections are conducted in the workplace. To the surprise of no one who can read federal election donation reports, all of the agency’s changes appear to help union bosses at the expense of everyone else.

. . .

(The hearing) is another sign the administration isn’t listening: American workers want jobs, and American employers want to create them. The economy can’t grow and employers can’t hire while fending off a government-backed assault by labor bosses.

The person driving all this job-killing carnage is Craig Becker, a former SEIU goon. Here's a couple of quotes illustrating his viewpoint on labor relations.

“On these latter issues employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practice case, even though Board rulings might indirectly affect their duty to bargain.”

"...employers should have no right to raise questions concerning (union) voter eligibility or (union) campaign conduct."

“Just as U.S. Citizens cannot opt against having a congressman, workers should not be able to choose against having a union as their monopoly-bargaining agent.”

In short, employers and workers have no rights. Only unions do.

And just how did Craig Becker end up as the head of the NLRB? It should come as no surprise that obama appointed him. What is surprising -- and disappointing, and downright scary -- is that Becker was appointed despite his nomination being rejected by the Senate.

“He never satisfactorily answered a series of questions that I posed to him – failing to reassure me that his years of service to labor unions would not color his decisions at the NLRB," Senator Orrin Hatch (R.,UT) said in a statement as reported by the Washington Post.

Becker couldn’t answer questions for a number of other Senators either so they scrapped his nomination.

Obama then made a recess appointment of Becker to the NLRB, the presidential equivalent of Enron accounting for political appointees.   

Becker is losing no time now in answering the questions and concerns Hatch and his fellow Senators had.

The answers are about as bad as they feared.

Becker's appointment was largley overlooked by the press and most of the populace. Ho-hum. Just another political hack appointed to some board or another. Unfortunately, this is an excellent illustration of that old saying about elections having consequences.

So where does that leave us? We have a head of the NLRB who was shoved down our throats over the oppostion of the U.S. Senate. We have the NLRB embarking on an unprecedented program of job-killing initiatives. And all this nonsense comes as the nation is experiencing an unemployment rate in excess of 9%, a cratering economy, and a debt crisis that threatens a major disruption to the nation's economy at a time when we can least withstand it.

And lest anyone think this is just demagoguing by some right wing extremist, let's take a look at a fact or two.

Over the last 30 years, from 1977 - 2008, employment in right-to-work states, or states where union membership is not compulsory, doubled, while employment in non-right-to-work states grew at a little less than half that rate. Unsurprisingly, per-capita income growth in those states followed a similar trend, although not as pronounced.

As the article linked to above goes on to point out, most of the right-to-work states tend to vote Republican. Is it any wonder that obama, the democrat establishment, and big labor want to punish them and reward the labor-dominated blue states?

Employers and employees alike are voting with their feet. And they likely will continue to do so.

Unless the NLRB has its way...