In Our View: Unfair to Boeing

Nineteen months ago — after extended and difficult negotiations with the International Association of Machinists — Seattle-based aviation giant Boeing announced it would open a second assembly line in South Carolina. Even so, since then Boeing increased hiring of IAM members in our state by more than 2,000, according to The Seattle Times, and plans call for the machinists to help build 10 of the new 787 Dreamliners per month at the Everett plant. That’s the same production as in South Carolina.

Connect those dots and you’ll have a difficult time concluding that Boeing has an “animus” toward the union, or that the company’s new assembly line in South Carolina amounted to “retaliation.” Yet that is what the National Labor Relations Board announced last month, using those words. The NLRB declared Boeing’s intentions in South Carolina to be an unfair labor practice and absurdly ordered the company to move the second assembly line back to Washington. Of course, this matter will wind up in court, where it deserves a quick death.

We wonder, first, why the federal government doesn’t work so hard to protect American jobs from moving overseas instead of just moving out of state. We also wonder why it took a year and a half for the NLRB to reach its ridiculous conclusion. And we wonder why President Obama has remained silent on this action by his appointee for NLRB general counsel, Lafe Solomon.

Boeing’s motivation for this decision was obvious. South Carolina is one of 22 right-to-work states. And as much as we wish that work had remained here, the company has done right by the union in protecting and expanding the original assembly line. The two-part bottom line was delineated in a recent editorial in The Seattle Times: “The company and the union are both grown-ups here. Each knows its rights. The union has a right to strike. It may be unwise to strike at a particular time, such as the month Wall Street had its worst collapse in 75 years, but it is the union’s right. The company has the right to build assembly plants. It can build them in South Carolina or in Afghanistan if it likes. Its decision may be unwise, but it is Boeing’s.” Precisely. And how the NLRB meanders away from this logic is inexplicable.

If upheld, the NLRB ruling could spawn an unintended consequence. Boeing CEO Jim McNerney explained in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that “forward-thinking CEOs also would be reluctant to place new plants in unionized states — lest they be forever restricted from placing future plants elsewhere across the country.” McNerney also wrote that Boeing “made a rational, legal business decision about the allocation of our capital and the placement of new work within the U.S. We’re confident the federal courts will reject the claim, but only after a significant and unnecessary expense to taxpayers.”

Another astute observation was written in the Journal by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley: “In choosing to manufacture in my state, Boeing was exercising its right as a free enterprise in a free nation to conduct business wherever it believed would best serve both the bottom line and the employees of its company. This is not a novel or complicated idea. It’s called capitalism.”

It’s also called business the American way. The NLRB decision was wrong-headed and — worse — will likely adversely impact future union jobs because companies will fear locating in union-heavy states. The NLRB wouldn’t want that kind of a result.