Boeing’s new non-union 787 production line is at the center of the controversy. GOP's NLRB funding move rejected

Split down the middle, the Senate Appropriations Committee narrowly rejected a GOP amendment to deny funding for the National Labor Relations Board to pursue any order threatening Boeing’s new non-union 787 production line in South Carolina.

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) joined 14 Republicans on the 15-15 vote, which failed for lack of a majority after a strong push by labor.


The action Wednesday evening came as the committee approved a $158 billion budget funding labor, health and education agencies including the NLRB for the new fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Program levels in the giant bill would be largely frozen at 2011 levels, and the same pattern was repeated in a second $109.5 billion bill covering housing and transportation.

The NLRB’s $282.8 appropriation is a small piece of this puzzle. But the Boeing controversy has given Republicans a foothold to attack the board, and the House voted 238-196 last week in support of a bill also to weaken its enforcement power.

As drafted by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the amendment was aimed at the Boeing case but written in such a generic fashion that it would impact the NLRB’s powers in other instances when employers are shown to have moved work from one facility to another to retaliate again workers for lawful union activities.

Boeing says now that it built the new facility in South Carolina for unrelated cost reasons, but the Chicago-based company is haunted by past public comments by its executives suggesting their decisions were also driven by a history of strikes mounted by unionized machinists working in the Seattle area.

That record is such that the NLRB’s counsel found that Boeing’s decision to locate in South Carolina – a right-to-work state — constituted illegal retaliation against its union workers, and with 1100 jobs at stake, the issue has become a cause célèbre, especially in the Southeast, against the labor board.

In colorful language, Graham described his proposal as a “stop the madness amendment” and only seeking to “take a remedy away from this board that would have the effect of destroying job creation.”

To win over Pryor, he agreed to changes that would leave the same enforcement power in place in cases when a company retaliates against union organizing efforts as opposed to strikes. But Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) answered that 75 years of labor law were at stake and the amendment pointed “a dagger at the heart” of the NLRB.

“I don’t want to take jobs out of South Carolina,” Harkin said. “But I do want to be able to protect the rights of workers.”