Nancy Pelosi's Jobs Plan: Shut Down Non-Union Plants in Right to Work States (Except for GE's)

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has weighed this week in on the ongoing dispute between Boeing and the National Labor Relations Board, stating that the aircraft manufacturer's South Carolina facility should shut down if it can't unionize [video at link- NANESB!].

Interestingly, Pelosi's comments come more than two years after workers at the Charleston, SC plant voted overwhelmingly to decertifty their union.

In a move that seemingly went under the radar back in May, General Electric [NYSE: GE] announced that they were constructing a new 500,000 square foot facility to build locomotives in right-to-work Fort Worth, TX- shifting production from closed-shop Erie, PA with no apparent objection from either Congresswoman Pelosi or the NLRB.

Other venues under consideration included Lynn, MA and Mexico. With rival Caterpillar's [NYSE: CAT] subsidiary Progress Rail opening up a new facility in Indiana, GE and Local 201 of the International Union of Electrical Workers were unable to come to any sort of agreement regarding wages.

While GE's Railway unit CEO Lorenzo Simonelli disclosed that a Mexican site had been under consideration by GE they ultimately chose the Ft. Worth site for largely political reasons.

The Fort Worth choice saves Immelt from the potential embarrassment of having the facility go south of the border while he serves as chairman of President Barack Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

The Obama Administration had previously lavished Immelt's General Electric with millions in stimulus money and 'green energy' grants while the conglomerate continued to outsource jobs overseas. Prior to January of this year, GE was also the parent company of NBC/Universal entertainment, whose networks frequently act as the Obama Administration (or Obama campaign's) unofficial mouthpiece. Earlier this year, Comcast [NASDAQ: CMCSA] gained a majority control of the NBC networks.

Since the May announcement about the Texas locomotive facility, General Electric has announced they are breaking ground on two more projects in right-to-work states.

Last month, the conglomerate announced that they will be building a $95 million 236,000 square foot facility that will make components for mining equipment- also in Ft Worth, TX.

Meanwhile, in Auburn, AL, GE is breaking ground on a new jet engine component factory this month. Like the two facilities in Fort Worth, the NLRB apparently sees no problem with Immelt's GE setting up shop in right-to-work states as they've remained conspicuously silent on the matter.

[Hat tip: Director Blue, Lonely Conservative, Eat it or Wear It]

LOT Polish Airlines 767 Touches Down With No Landing Gear At Warsaw

A Boeing 767 from Polish carrier LOT airlines enroute from Newark International made an emergency landing at Warsaw's Chopin International Airport on Tuesday with the landing gear stuck.

WARSAW, Poland – A Boeing airliner carrying 231 people from the U.S. landed on its belly Tuesday in Warsaw after its landing gear failed to open, triggering sparks and small fires. No one was hurt, but passengers described feeling severe stress as they prayed for a safe landing.

Capt. Tadeusz Wrona, who handled the descent so smoothly that many on board thought the Boeing 767 landed on its wheels, was instantly hailed a hero in Poland and online, where within hours he was the focus of several Facebook fan pages

"I was praying for the pilot not to lose control because we started to make circles over the airport. It was terrible," passenger Teresa Kowalik told reporters at the airport. "We owe everything to the pilot. He really did a great job."

LOT said the plane suffered "a central hydraulic system failure," indicating that the hydraulics used to extend the landing gear, or undercarriage, failed. The failure of an entire undercarriage was unprecedented for a Boeing 767 and highly unusual overall, according to aviation data and experts.

The pilots discovered there was a problem about half an hour after leaving Newark, said LOT president Marcin Pirog. They circled the plane above the airport for about one hour before descending, partly to keep trying to release the landing gear, and partly to use up fuel to lessen the risk of a blaze.

The pilot told passengers four hours into the flight that the plane faced technical problems, said a passenger who gave only her first name, Malgorzata.

"The pilot addressed us a number of times and said we should follow instructions. Later, a flight attendant said there might be a fire, and at that point people began to get nervous and uncertain," she said.

By the time the plane landed, escorted by two F-16 fighter jets, its fuel tanks were nearly empty, LOT spokesman Leszek Chorzewski said.

A fire brigade laid out special flame retardant foam for the plane to land on. On landing, sparks flew from the engine and small fires erupted under the plane but were immediately put out by firefighters.

The landing itself was so smooth that "we all thought we had landed on wheels," said Andrzej Pinno, a 68-year-old passenger.

Passengers even applauded, but then grew alarmed when sparks and black smoke rose from the plane. "This is the moment where we realized this was not a normal landing," added Pinno.

Passengers were then evacuated using emergency slides. They were taken to a medical center where they were kept several hours before being released.

"We were waiting for a crash, and we waited and waited and waited -- and thank God it never happened," said Greg Cohen, a passenger from Livingston, New Jersey. "It was a very lucky flight, a very, very great pilot. We are very fortunate."

Relatives of passengers waiting at the airport sought information as the emergency unfolded.

Joanna Dabrowska, 29, managed to speak to her mother-in-law, a passenger, via mobile phone after she evacuated the flight. "She was in shock, but she was fine," Dabrowska said.

Meanwhile, Polish officials and media declared the pilots and crew heroes. LOT said there were 11 crew and 220 passengers on the LO 016 flight.

LOT airlines president, Pirog, told reporters that Wrona and co-pilot Jerzy Szwartz carried out a "perfect emergency landing," which prevented anyone from being injured. "Unfortunately it rarely ends this way," Pirog said.

Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski congratulated and thanked the crew and emergency workers for ensuring no one was hurt.

"I thank everyone with my whole heart in the name of Poland," Komorowski said.

Within hours, at least six Facebook fanpages devoted to Capt. Wrona had appeared. On Twitter, admiration was profuse. One Tweeter insisted, "Give that pilot a medal!" Others drew comparisons to Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who became a national hero in the U.S. when he landed a crippled US Airways jet in the Hudson River and saved 155 lives.

Warsaw's Chopin International Airport was shut down overnight due to the plane coming to a rest near a spot where both of the main runways intersect. Flights are being rerouted to the airports at Lodz, Gdansk and Krakow while officials and rescue workers are clearing the runways in Warsaw.

Poland had experienced a number of aviation disasters in recent years, the most recent of which was the April 2010 crash in Smolensk, Russia that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others on board.

Big Labor Shill: Keep Boeing Jobs Out of the South Because Southerners Are Dumb and Poorly Paid

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Chicago Lawyer, Illinois democrat operative and Union mouthpiece Thomas Geoghegan argues the case that Boeing's move to South Carolina is bad for workers, bad for Boeing and bad for America. Yet interestingly, one of the few defenders of the NLRB's decision against Boeing setting up an assembly line for the 787 Dreamliner beautifully (yet unintentionally) makes the argument for right to work states with a vacuous screed against the South designed as concise, intelligent and insightful commentary.

Conservatives are in an uproar that the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board has filed an unfair labor charge against Boeing. It seems the president of Boeing was unwise enough to blurt out that his company would move a production line to South Carolina as payback for past strikes by machinists in Seattle. It's a dead bang violation of the National Labor Relations Act, even if it comes as a surprise to Republicans and many other Americans.

Section 7 of the Wagner Act, passed in 1935, states that all workers can engage in concerted activities without reprisal. The president of Boeing said, in effect: You exercise those rights and we're moving. Companies have long done such things, of course, but CEOs aren't usually so gaffe-prone as to say so.

The Boeing case may show that labor is so out of mind that CEOs have forgotten what they can or cannot say. It would have been easy enough for Boeing to move the production line to South Carolina and let the workers in Seattle draw the conclusion. There is little bar to a runaway shop if the CEO is careful with his public statements.

Umm...Proof please? And if production at one of my facilities was jeopardized by the near-constant threat of a work stoppage or walkouts, I'd probably start looking for greener pastures in a right-to-work state myself.

Yet the Boeing case has a scarier aspect missed by conservatives: Why is Boeing, one of our few real global champions in beefing up exports, moving work on the Dreamliner from a high-skill work force ($28 an hour on average) to a much lower-wage work force ($14 an hour starting wage)? Nothing could be a bigger threat to the economic security of this country.

So higher wage equals higher skill set? Or just higher cost of living? Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there significant differences in taxes and cost-of-living between Washington State and South Carolina?

We should be aghast that Boeing is sending a big fat market signal that it wants a less-skilled, lower-quality work force. This country is in a debt crisis because we buy abroad much more than we sell. Alas, because of this trade deficit, foreign creditors have the country in their clutches. That's not because of our labor costs—in that respect, we can undersell most of our high-wage, unionized rivals like Germany. It's because we have too many poorly educated and low-skilled workers that are simply unable to compete.

Wow? Really? Assuming you're still talking about the South, BMW didn't seem to put off by the 'poorly educated and low skilled' workers in the region- neither did Mercedes Benz. GE Transportation is poised to open up a second locomotive facility in Texas- another right to work state.

We depend on Boeing to out-compete Airbus, its European rival. But when major firms move South, it is usually a harbinger of quality decline. Over and over as a labor lawyer in the 1980s and '90s, I saw companies move away from Chicago, where the pay was $28 an hour, to some place in South Carolina or Louisiana where the pay was about half that. While these moves aggrieved me as a union lawyer, it might have consoled me as an American if those companies went on to thrive globally.

But too often, alas, it was the beginning of the end, as it was for Outboard Marine Corporation, where I once represented workers. In the 1990s the company went from the high wage union North to the low wage South and was bankrupt by 2000. There are reasons workers in the North get $28 an hour while down in the South they get $14 or even $10. Adam Smith could explain it: "productivity," "skill level," "quality."

Here is yet another American firm seeking to ruin its reputation for quality. Why? To save $14 an hour! Seriously: Is that going to help sell the Dreamliner? In terms of the finished product, the labor cost is minuscule: $14 in hourly wage, at most. It's incredible that conservatives claim such small differences in labor cost would be life or death to Boeing. It's not labor cost but labor skill that is life or death to the survival of Boeing, never mind pilots and passengers.

If the history of runaway shops proves anything, it's that many go "South" in more than one sense of the word. If that sounds unfair to the South, it is union busting that has inflicted the real unfairness in the region: income inequality and inferior schools.

Inferior schools like Detroit, where nearly half the population is considered functionally illiterate? Say...isn't Michigan a big union stronghold? Ah well, I'm sure the two aren't related in any way.

At this moment especially, deep in debt, we cannot afford to let another company like Boeing self-destruct. Boeing is not a product of the free market—it's an extension of the U.S. government.

Wow- so Boeing was nationalized when nobody was paying attention? Or is Mr Geoghegan arguing that the NLRB's decision the first step in that direction?

Over the years, our taxpayers have paid to create a Boeing work force with exceptionally high skills. That work force is not just an asset for Boeing—it's an asset for the country. Why should the country let Boeing take it apart?

Ummm....because it's their company and allowing the NLRB to dictate to companies where they can and can't set up shop would be setting a very bad precedent that anybody but the densest union shill could see would have longer term consequences beyond a current labor-management dispute.

Every American should be rooting for the NLRB's general counsel, as the board itself has not yet found a violation.

Most depressing of all, Boeing's move would send a market signal to those considering a career in engineering or high-skilled manufacturing. It is a message that corporate America has delivered over and over: Don't go to engineering school, don't bother with fancy apprenticeships, don't invest in skills. No rational person wants to take on college or even community college debt to come out and work on the Dreamliner—which should be the country's finest product—for a miserable $14 an hour.

Am I not reading this correctly, or is Mr Geoghegan conflating '$14 an hour for an entry level position' with '$14 an hour from now until the end of time' because apparently workers down south don't get promoted or get raises or anything. OK, now that I think about it, Mr Champion-of-the-working class, where were you when I was earning less than $11 an hour- graveyard shift- with no benefits in a VERY blue/pro-union state with supposedly one of the most educated workforces in the country during the past 24 months?

If a single story in the news can sum up the reasons for America's global decline, it's the decision to build a Dreamliner that will gut the American dream.

Yes...because if there's anything the Wisconsin union protests have taught me earlier this year, it's that union workforces should be exempted from making any sacrifices or concessions in these difficult economic times.

National Labor Relations Board Rules South Carolina Boeing Plant Violation of Federal Law

The National Labor Relations Board ruled this week that aircraft manufacturer Boeing was in violation of Federal labor laws by constructing a second non-union facility in South Carolina to facilitate production of its 787 Dreamlier.

The Chicago company called the NLRB's complaint "legally frivolous" and a "radical departure" from precedents. It said it will fight the complaint, which was sought by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union.

The NLRB's action comes amid a broad conflict over the role of unions in the economy. Unions have responded to setbacks in the 2010 elections, which put Republicans in charge of the U.S. House of Representatives and in state houses around the country, by pressing the Obama administration and the majority Democrat NLRB to favor union positions.

Boeing [NYSE: BA] had been plagued by strikes and work stoppages in recent years at it's facilities in Everett, WA. The Washington state Boeing plant was represented by Local 751 of the Internationa Association of Machinists, which brought an unfair labor practices grievance against Boeing before the NLRB in March 2010. The complaint alleges that Boeing was using the Charleston, SC plant to threaten IAM workers if the opted to go on strike.

Boeing acquired the South Carolina facility from troubled supplier Vought in July 2009, reportedly citing the risk of strike among the reasons for the 2nd facility in South Carolina. However, Boeing has also recently expanded production in the Puget Sound area.

From all outward appearences, this appears to be the unions using a NLRB stacked with pro Big Labor appointees to do an end-run around right to work states like Souht Carolina or Texas. Boeing has announced that they plan on fighting the ruling.

Exit question: if the NRLB decides to insert itself into a company's decision on where to set up shop, then what really is there to prevent it from imposing Card Check on individual businesses?