June 29, 1934: Executive Order 6763 Creating of the First National Labor Relations Board
(a) To investigate issues, facts, practices, and activities of employers or employees in any controversies arising … which are burdening or obstructing, or threatening to burden or obstruct, the free flow of interstate commerce; and
(b) To order and conduct elections and on its own initiative to take steps to enforce its orders in the manner provided in Section 2 of Public Resolution 44, 73d Congress; and
(c) Whenever it is in the public interest, to hold hearings and make findings of fact regarding complaints of discrimination against or discharge of employees or other alleged violations of Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act and such parts of any code or agreement as incorporate said Section; and
(d) To prescribe, with the approval of the President, such rules and regulations …to collective bargaining, labor representation, and labor elections as the President is authorized to prescribe by Section 10(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act.
(e) Upon the request of the parties to a labor dispute, to act as a Board of Voluntary Arbitration or to select a person or agency for voluntary arbitration.
How quaint. Under President Obama, the National Labor Relations Board has mission creep on steroids.
What they are doing to Boeing is a true disgrace. With 9% unemployment, they have 1,000 excellent, high wage/high benefit jobs in South Carolina on hold and a billion dollar plant (aka investment) sitting idle. Boeing is not free to make decisions in the best interests of their business. Oh no. They must first think about the unions…and then work around them.
This is not my opinion, its what the New York Times reported ,
In what may be the strongest signal yet of the new pro-labor orientation of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama, the agency filed a complaint Wednesday seeking to force Boeing to bring an airplane production line back to its unionized facilities in Washington State instead of moving the work to a nonunion plant in South Carolina.
Twenty GOP Senators wrote a letter to Obama which was highly critical of the policy,
We consider this an attack on millions of workers in 22 right-to-work states, as well as a government-led act of intimidation against American companies that should have the freedom to choose to build plants in right-to-work states. If the NLRB prevails, it will only encourage companies to make their investments in foreign nations, moving jobs and economic growth overseas.
America will not win the future if Washington penalizes workers in states that have discovered winning economic strategies. Right-to-work states have faster job growth, faster income growth, and faster population growth than forced-unionism states. This winning strategy should be duplicated nationwide. Instead, successful workers rights are being stamped out by political appointees who serve at your pleasure and have not been confirmed by the Senate.
Sen. Harry Reid gave a blistering speech, mounting a vigorous defense, said on the Senate floor that the NLRB “acts as a check on employers and employees alike†and is consistent with the “spirit of checks and balances†established by the Founding Fathers, according to The Hill.
Hat tip to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, who noted in March 2010 that the radicals were coming to the NLRB,
The Becker appointment, coming over the objections of both Republicans and Democrats (which is why Harry Reid couldn’t get Becker confirmed even with 60 Democrats), gives the GOP yet another piece of evidence of Obama’s radicalism. The President sold himself as a post-partisan moderate in 2008, but his appointments of people like Van Jones and Craig Becker give evidence that Obama is at his heart a radical Leftist with better PR than most. In 2010, those kinds of decisions will make a great deal of difference in Senate races, where Republicans can argue to replace Democratic incumbents in order to check Obama’s radical appointments.
In this case, those appointments are implementing awful policies at the worst possible time. The administration cannot let this stand and simultaneously claim to be pro-business.
Jim McNerney, CEO of Boeing, has written a must read op-ed,
The NLRB is wrong and has far overreached its authority. Its action is a fundamental assault on the capitalist principles that have sustained America’s competitiveness since it became the world’s largest economy nearly 140 years ago. We’ve made a rational, legal business decision about the allocation of our capital and the placement of new work within the U.S.
…Our union contracts expressly permit us to locate new work at our discretion.
…Important to our case is the basic fact that no existing work is being transferred to South Carolina, and not a single union member in Washington has been adversely affected by this decision. In fact, we’ve since added more than 2,000 union jobs there, and the hiring continues. The 787 production line in Everett has a planned capacity of seven airplanes per month. The line in Charleston will build three additional airplanes to reach our 10-per-month capacity plan. Production of the new U.S. Air Force aerial refueling tanker will sustain and grow union jobs in Everett, too.
This is a Top 5 offense of the Obama administration. It should be a major campaign issue, as jobs are STILL the issue. This president is a complete failure on that front, and the GOP should focus their attention like a laser beam on that issue.