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…
The Post and Courier of South Carolina opines that the attack could doom big labor. Here's why: Organized labor's political supporters took a beating in last year's elections at every level throughout the nation. Now the unions are fighting back -- and the "right to work" states of the South and West are rhetorical and actual targets, especially South Carolina. Consider the latest threat by the National Labor Relations Board. Acting General Council Lafe Solomon wrote attorneys general in South Carolina, South Dakota, Arizona and Utah on April 22 that constitutional amendments requiring a secret ballot for union elections adopted by voters in all four states last year are a violation of federal law, and that he plans to sue them in federal courts to invalidate the state laws. The constitutional amendment requiring that the decision to form a union must be reached through secret ballot was approved by 86 percent of South Carolina voters last November. Voter approval rates were 79 percent in South Dakota, 61 percent in Arizona and 60 percent in Utah. The Solomon threat comes on top of a complaint by the NLRB against Boeing for opening a production line for the 787 Dreamliner in North Charleston, claiming that it was illegal retaliation against unionized workers in Washington state.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation battles for truck driver’s rights against the Teamsters and wins legal victory. Allyson Bird of the Charleston Post and Courier: A state judge has ruled that a Teamsters union local discriminated against a North Carolina trucker and owes the driver $55,500 in back pay for preventing him from working on the television series "Army Wives." The Lifetime cable drama currently is filming its fifth season locally. The labor dispute arose during the show's third season, which left a makeup truck driver from Wilmington, N.C., named Thomas Troy Coghill out of work. "Army Wives" typically uses 15 to 20 drivers daily when filming, according to a court filing. Coghill began working for the show during its second season, when many drivers with the South Carolina-based International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 509 had committed to working on the movie "The New Daughter," also shot locally. Local 509's business agent, L.D. Fletcher, threatened to picket, according to the court filing, unless "Army Wives" cut all drivers who were not members of his organization. "Army Wives" transportation coordinator Lee Siler told Coghill that he should move to South Carolina and join Local 509 if he wanted to work the third season, the court filing says. Coghill testified that he wrote and called the local -- even while in India -- but months passed without a response. Eventually, Fletcher told him the union was closed but that he would add Coghill to a "B list." Fletcher later admitted that no such list existed, according to court documents.