NLRB Held Boeing Hostage

The Boston Herald takes the NLRB to task for forcing Boeing to “pay ransom” to Big Labor unions in order to get its complaint against the company dropped:

The Obama administration was saved from yet another pre-election embarrassment late last week when the National Labor Relations Board dropped its suit against Boeing’s efforts to build an aircraft manufacturing plant in South Carolina.

Yes, it couldn’t get much crazier than in the middle of a recession when this administration still wants to pour billions of tax dollars into creating jobs — at least public sector ones — that a federal agency would hold one of the nation’s leading employers hostage. But that’s exactly what was going on when the NLRB halted Boeing’s efforts in response to a case brought by the Machinists union.

The union had charged that Boeing wanted to open the new plant in South Carolina in retaliation for past union strikes at its Washington state plant. And since the Obama-era NLRB is a wholly-owned toady of organized labor, it accepted at face value the union’s allegations.

Of course, Boeing in the end was held hostage until it ransomed its North Charleston plant by approving a new four-year contract with the Machinists in Washington state where the firm also promised to build a new version of the 737 aircraft. And, not surprisingly, the Machinists dropped their bogus charges.

And that’s really at the heart about how this particular cast of characters at the NLRB operates.

Lafe Solomon, acting general counsel for the board, said he always preferred a settlement. In fact about 90 percent of the cases brought to the board are resolved through settlement — that is if you call it a “settlement” when, faced with this kind of relentless federal assault, a private firm finally cries “uncle.”

Anywhere else it would be called thuggery. But under this administration — with its every move favoring its organized union base — it’s called justice.