NLRB Boeing Retreat Snubs Workers

The South Carolina Post and Courier shows how workers are often treated as pawn in labor disputes:

Don’t get Glenn Taubman wrong:  He’s glad the National Labor Relations Board union-busting case against Boeing Co. is over.

It’s how it ended that bothers him.

Taubman, a staff attorney at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, represents the three local Boeing employees who won limited participation in the controversial case earlier this year. He said they received a copy of every legal paper filed over the summer and fall, yet they were not invited to participate in the concluding conference call among the varied parties.

During the Dec. 8 call, Administrative Law Judge Clifford Anderson considered whether he needed to hear from the attorney for Dennis Murray,Cynthia Ramaker and Meredith Going Sr. Lawyers from both Boeing and the International Association of Machinists discouraged the idea.

Wrapping up the call, Anderson said, “Even though I have finessed them here, they need to be informed,” according to the call transcript.

A miffed Taubman responded last week: “We’re certainly happy that the case is over, and that there appears to be protection for our clients and the Charleston workers, but the idea that they were excluded in this way shows how rigged the whole process was.”

He said the way the case ended — with a union contract extension in Washington somehow solving the South Carolina claims and then the 24-minute chat between the judge and the lawyers — was “totally bizarre.”

“They haven’t heard the last of it,” he said. “We’re investigating our options of how to proceed in light of what we feel was a failing of the NLRB process.