NLRB challenges Boeing in planned South Carolina jobs move. The Board claims retaliation against Company's union employees

Boeing Assembly Plant in Everett Washington. Will the National Labor Relations Board and the Courts permit moving  1,000 union jobs to "right to work" South Carolina?  Photo: Getty Images-Stephen Brashear

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is calling Boeing's planned move of 1,000 union aircraft assembly jobs from Seattle to South Carolina illegal. The claim the company is retaliating against its Puget Sound, unionized employees for exercising their legal right to strike. The issue has become a Republican cause celebre and is expected to become a major issue in the upcoming 2012 Presidential elections.

The matter is going to court but in the meantime, South Carolina's Senators Jim Demint and Lindsey Graham, Governor Nikki Haley and others have not only weighed in on the case but have used it to propose defunding the NLRB which would effectively turn back the clock in US labor relations nearly 80 years. Demint contends that so called right to work states outperform union shop states economically.

In upcoming posts, we will look at the evidence. We will ask if "right to work" has helped or hurt South Carolina and we will look at some of the ulterior motives of Senator Demint and the anti-union right as well as the history of the National Labor Relations Act and what this has meant for American workers and their standard of living.

Pleas check back with us for more news on the Boeing-Machinist's Union dispute and in the meantime we offer you these related articles.

Boeing outguns Machinist's Union on lobbying provides big money to South Carolina politicians

Machinist's Union (IAM) statement with link to the actual NLRB complaint

GOP-Darrell Issa led House panel to hold Boeing hearings in South Carolina-MSNBC

Senator Demint wants access to NLRB documents in the Boeing-South Carolina case

Check the record: Jim Demint put anti-unionism ahead of air passenger security.

Who owns Jim Demint? Big corporate money and Koch Brothers are major contributors to campaign and Demint PAC

Shared sacrifice in South Carolina? Not while Nikki Haley is there to cut the State budget and reward her friends with big salary increases

With high unemployment, violent crime and some of the Nation's worst poverty bound to get worse under her draconian budget cuts, South Carolina's Governor Nikki Haley rewards GOP elites, campaign supporters and staffers with big salary increases. This in a state where the median household income is a meager $39,316 (2005) 41st in the United States.

By Jody Barr, WIS

Haley's highest-paid staffer is her chief of staff, Tim Pearson, who rakes in $125,000 a year. Pearson also ran Haley's gubernatorial campaign.

Pearson isn't not the only Haley campaign worker to follow her into the governor's office. Haley's campaign consultant, Trey Walker, is also now on the state payroll as Haley's deputy chief of staff, earning $122,000 a year.

Haley and her spokesman, Rob Godfrey, have denied several requests for interviews to defend the increases our investigation uncovered. Late Thursday, however, Walker agreed to explain the governor's salary increases on camera.


Read more about Govenor Haley's Good Old Boy system.


South Carolina pays for Gov. Haley's European vacation, "vague" results on jobs and trade
Legislators rig South Carolina pension-salary deals in their favor