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]

Today's Train of Thought- Slim Pickens, September 12 2011

Today's Train of Thought takes us to the South Carolina-based Pickens Railway. The Railway was chartered in 1890 to operate between it's namesake of Pickens and the town of Easley, SC- just under 10 miles. The little shortline ceased passenger service in 1928 as improved roads were built throughout the region and instead the Pickens focused on freight. At various points, the Pickens was controlled by the Southern Railway and Singer Manufacturing before expanding operations some 100 years after its original charter.

In the 1990s, the Pickens expanded from their original trackage to the Norfolk Southern line between Honea Path and Belton, SC- and then on to Anderson, SC- some 28 miles total. At Anderson, the Pickens interchanges with CSX, Norfolk Southern and Greenville & Western

Up until that the 1990s expansion, the Pickens had operated with same Baldwin road switcher that the railroad dieselized with in the late 1940s- a second Baldwin was added in the 1970s and an EMD that had since been sold to another Carolinas shortline. With the expansion, the Pickens sidelined the Baldwins for a pair of caterpillar re-engined ALCo S2s. Those were in turn sidelined when the Pickens purchased eight former CSX U18Bs in 2000.

Here, Pickens U18B #9500 is caught by railpictures.net contributor Anthony Davis crossing US Highway 29 just outside of Anderson, SC after picking up a cut of ballast cars from Belton in August 2011. Interestingly, the bright orange paint scheme wasn't from the Pickens. In the late 1990s, CSX set aside their remaining U18Bs (U = General Electric's Universal Series, 18= 1800 hp, B = 4 axles) for MofW service, painting them all in a distinctive orange paint scheme. Pickens simply relettered them shortly after acquiring the GE's from CSX.

Today's Train of Thought- A (Gypsy) Rose by Any Other Name; July 15 2011

With a name like Lancaster & Chester, you would expect today's Train of Thought to highlight a bucolic shortline running through Pennsylvania Dutch Country. While the countryside the L&C runs through can be described as bucolic the railway actually runs through the northern reaches of the Palmetto State.

The L&C, also known as the Springmaid Line, started up from an 1877 charter to build a 29-mile rail line connecting Chesterfield and Chester counties. Given the inevitable changes that the larger carriers the L&C interchanged with over the last century, operations along the Springmaid Line itself was relatively unchanged until the last decade or so.

However, under the tenure of Elliot White Springs in the 1950s, the shortline embarked on a series of flamboyant and tongue-in-cheek promotions including appointing 29 different Vice Presidents- one for each mile of track.

Perhaps the most memorable was when striptease artist and burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee (above) was named Lancaster & Chester's 'Vice President of Unveiling'. The railroad also offered a fictitious menu for a number of entrees served on their nonexistent passenger trains, including items like 'Split Dixiecrats with Frozen Assets' or 'Back Bay Trollops with Harvard Accent'- despite the fact that the L&C didn't even own a dining car.

Over the years, traffic has consisted of coal, textile products, aggregates, fertilizer, wood products, sand and fiberglass, with a stable of powder-blue EMD end cab switchers doing most of the heavy lifting throughout much of the L&C's diesel era.

In the late 1990s, JP Henderson Inc set up shop on L&C property and began extensively refurbishing and restoring passenger cars. In 2001, the L&C entered into a lease agreement with the Norfolk Southern to begin operating additional trackage in Lancaster County between Catawba Jct and Kershaw. The expansion meant additional motive power for the L&C- first a pair of SW1200s followed by a pair of SW1500s.

However, in addition to borrowing some LLPX loaners the L&C made their first ever purchase of EMD roadswitchers with the purchase of a couple of ex Norfolk Southern (nee Conrail) GP38-2s that were eventually painted in Lancaster & Chester's powder blue scheme and lettered for the Springmaid Line.

In late 2010, the it was announced that Tenessee-based Gulf & Ohio railways would acquire the L&C. The Gulf & Ohio operates the Yadkin Valley and Laurinburg Southern just up the road in North Carolina. In June of this year, the G&O began sending motive power to the L&C starting with a former Kansas City Southern GP38-3. Apparently the plan is to replace the LLPX locomotives with power from other G&O operations as their leases expire.

Bringing us to the very top of the page, railpictures.net contributor Joe Hinson caught a trio of L&C GP38s working the Norfolk Southern interchange at Chester, SC in May 2011. The third unit in the consist is apparently one of the LLPX loaners still on property, although it's difficult to say if it was obscured by design on the photographer's part.

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?

150 Years Ago Today- Civil War Begins in Earnest

Take THAT, ya Yankee devils!

A nation divded, an inexperienced president and simmering regional tensions threatening to boil over into something even bigger.

No- I'm not talking about today. April 12 marks the 150th anniversary of the opening salvo of the Civil War as the Union commander of Ft Sumter rejected Confederate demands to surrender. Technically the first shots of what would become the Civil War were fired back in January of 1861 by cadets from the Citadel to block ships attempting to resupply the Union garrison on the island Fort.

However, the Confederate forces in Charleston, SC would fire shells for over 30 hours at Ft. Sumter. The fort's second in command- none other than Abner Doubleday (then a Captain at the time) fired the first retaliatory shot from Ft. Sumter, although that was largely symbolic. After negotiations, the Confederate forces in Charleston allowed all 85 of the Union soldiers to withdraw from the fort.

Curiously, the bombardment from either side failed to cause any casualties. However, Union Pvt. William Hough was killed when the cannon he was loading for a 100-gun salute shortly after the formal surrender ceremony accidentally went off while he was loading it. It is widely believed that Hough was the first casualty in what would become America's bloodiest conflict.

UPDATE- I thought I'd add a quiz at the very top of the page. Do your best to try and figure this one out without looking it up online. The answer may very well surprise you.

Not Another New England Sports Blog! Presents the Gawker-Friendly October Surprise Press Kit

In the wake of the apparent Gawker fiasco involving an alleged one night stand with Delaware Senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell by an anonymous author, I though I'd offer a press kit for future 'October surprises' centering around two consenting adults who may or may not have had sex (but probably not in the instance Gawker has highlighted).....particularly if the candidate is a fairly attractive woman running for office as a Republican.

Just use this template for future press releases or disclosures to the tabloid and watch the attention you've so desperately been whoring for come crashing in like a tidal wave:

Dear [insert publication or website name here] ________________:

I never thought it could happen to a guy like me. This took place a few years ago when I was a

[] Superbowl MVP Quarterback

[] Army Force Recon SAS Ranger SEAL Commando

[] Secret Agent Billionaire Cowboy

[] Deadbeat College Student.

It was Halloween and I had been pounding

[] Jello Shooters

[] Budweiser

[] Black Tar Heroin

[] Absinthe poured into an upside down bowler hat

all afternoon when in walked my roomate's girlfriend's cousin's sister's best friend and her classmates. I could tell they all wanted me so bad, but I was all like "Yeah, whatever" as I looked up from the

[] XBox

[] Nintendo 64

[] Laser Tag

[] Gaming platform yet to be invented.

I've gotten used to it with this cursed animal magnetism of mine totally drawing the shorties to me like a moth to flame. But still, it get's annoying after awhile, and one look from my steely azure eyes let them know that I was so not interested.

But this one chick wouldn't take the hint. For her Halloween costume, she was dressed up like

[] A Ladybug

[] A Maid

[] A Bellydancer

[] That Asian Dominatrix I pay to strangle me every week.

It was a good look for her, but she threw off this sort of desperate and clingy vibe that made me uneasy. Plus I couldn't help but shake the feeling that she would some day be in the running for

[] Congress

[] US Senate

[] Governor

[] America's Top Model

on a number of issues that made this 100% red blooded and heterosexual all American ladykiller who isn't afraid to show his sensitive side more than a little nervous. At this point she asked me if she could change right there and before I could even respond, her costume was already in a heap on the floor and [sordid details redacted] _____________________________.

[insert ambiguous and unverifiable boast about your unmatched sexual prowess over hapless, naked, mousy future political candidate here _______________________.]

Then she got all clingy and would like e-mail me and text me every month and be all "The restraining order says 50 feet- why is that so hard for you to understand?" "Hey- do you wanna hang out?". This chick would seriously not leave me alone, but being well versed in the art of seducing women I had absolutely no interest in, I was used to it. I didn't give it too much though at the time until just recently when I was watching TV and saw footage of

[] Christine O'Donnell

[] Nikki Haley

[] Yulia Tymoshenko

[] Lousie Slaughter

and I was like "Oh my god! That's so totally the chick that wouldn't leave me alone!". I mean..... "That's so totally one of the many chicks who won't leave me alone because I'm so awesome in the sack that I always leave them panting for more".

Why am I writing this, you may ask? Some of you out there might think I did it for the six figure check [insert name of publication or website______] cut me while others might think this anonymous, one-sided version of events is simply self serving bragging about one-night stands to compensate for experimenting with my bunkmate at the all-boys sleepaway camp advertise my Lothario-like charms and unmatched allure to all the chicks out there. To that, all I can say is 'shame on you'.

No, my pure and unselfish reasons for doing this are to warn you of the consequences of voting for somebody I totally did.

Well...OK, technically I didn't 'do' her, but she was like right there in front of me, and her being in the same room as me is clearly an indication of her longing for an unforgettable carnal encounter with yours truly, and she probably knew I was going to ditch her anyways.

So in closing, don't forget to vote for

[] Chris Coons

[] Vincent Sheheen

[] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

[] Keyser Soze

on November 2nd.

-Sincerely

Anonymous dude who's totally awesome in bed