The Indiana legislature completed passage on and Gov. Mitch Daniels immediately signed into law “right to work” legislation yesterday. The move by the state’s leaders makes Indiana the 23rd state in the nation and the first in the heartland to adopt right to work. Such measures forbid forced union membership and/or the payment of union dues or fees as a requirement of employment.

Indiana proponents of right-to-work argue that open shops will help attract new business investment and their jobs, a major political selling point after three straight years of high unemployment nationally. Governor Daniels stated, “This law won’t be a magic answer, but we’ll be far better off with it.”

How could we have gone three days without a post on the radicalized National Labor Relations Board? Well, there really have been few developments after last Thursday’s hearing in the Senate HELP Committee, “The Endangered Middle Class: Is the American Dream Slipping Out of Reach for American Families?,” which turned into a hearing on Boeing and the NLRB.

Mostly the story has percolated as new columnists catch up on the issue, as in George Will’s excellent piece over the weekend, “The Dreamliner nightmare.” (Datelined North Charleston, S.C., which means he was there. We saw Will rushing through Union Station last week, looking quite fit for a scribe who just celebrated his 70th birthday. Congratulations!)

The major substantive development was the introduction of S. 964, the Job Protection Act, by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on Thursday, May 12. In his floor speech (here), Alexander explained:

The Job Protection Act, which I introduce today on behalf of 34 Senators, would preserve the Federal law’s current protection of State right-to-work laws in the National Labor Relations Act and provide necessary clarity to prevent the NLRB from moving forward in their case against Boeing or attempting a similar strategy against other companies.

Specifically, the Job Protection Act would, first, explicitly clarify that the board cannot order an employer to relocate jobs from one location to another; two, it guarantees an employer the right to decide where to do business within the United States; and, three, it protects an employer’s free speech regarding the costs associated with having a unionized workforce without fear of such communication being used as evidence in an anti-union discrimination suit.

Sen. Alexander announced general plans for the bill on May 4, and it appears he and his colleagues used the time since to craft a solid piece of legislation.

We appreciate the Senator’s mention of the First Amendment protections, a underreported part of this controversy. The NLRB seeks to punish Boeing in part because several top executives spoke openly about the business costs of labor disruptions. If the board’s complaint stands, company executives could be deprived of their rights to say things like, “We’re concerned that a strike could make it hard to deliver our products and make us less competitive.” That’s not a threat of retaliation, that’s a statement of opinion that should always be protected free speech.

Elsewhere, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. In a discussion of the 2012 campaigns and Republican candidates, she also repeated her call for a comment on the NLRB’s complaint from President Obama. (continue reading…)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, interviewed by Candy Crowley on the National Labor Relations Board’s complaint against Boeing for choosing South Carolina over Washington state to locate a production facility for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

The video is here and the transcript is here. Sen. Graham’s comments provide great fodder for questions the White House press corps could ask spokesman Jay Carney. Today. During the daily press briefing.

CROWLEY: South Carolina’s senior senator wants to know why the NLRB is against the project when, in a previous life, one of the president’s top advisers thought it was a fine idea.

GRAHAM: Bill Daley, the president’s chief of staff, was on the board of Boeing at the time they made the decision to locate to South Carolina. For the complaint to be legitimate, you would have to assume that the president’s chief of staff engaged in retaliatory behavior against a union.

That’s just the start of some tough commentary from Sen. Graham.

At National Review Online, The Corner, Robert Costa interviews Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), who also has pointed, political remarks for President Obama. From “Haley Pressures Obama, ’12 Field on NLRB“

Boeing, which has poured billions into the new facility, calls the agency’s complaint “legally frivolous.” Haley, for her part, is baffled by how the feds think that they can kick around a private company, picking and choosing where it operates. “There is no case; this is ridiculous,” she says. “It is an embarrassment for the NLRB. The unions are losing and this is nothing more than a desperate attempt to see if they can make their voices relevant again.” (continue reading…)

The Seattle Times, which reports on its hometown Boeing Company more than any other U.S. newspaper, has editorialized against the National Labor Relations Board’s complaint against the company over its decision to build new production facilities in South Carolina against Washington state.

From “Boeing’s South Carolina 787 assembly line disappointing but not ‘unfair’“:

It was a blow to Puget Sound country when Boeing put its second 787 assembly line in South Carolina. It was also part of a hardball negotiation between the company and the International Association of Machinists. This page regretted Boeing’s decision, but has never thought of it as something that could be, or should be, reversed by the federal government.

The National Labor Relations Board has labeled Boeing’s decision an unfair labor practice, and is asking a federal court to order the line to be moved to Washington. We would celebrate the day Boeing decided to do that — but it is Boeing’s decision.

The company and the union are both grown-ups here. Each knows its rights.

The union has a right to strike. It may be unwise to strike at a particular time, such as the month Wall Street had its worst collapse in 75 years, but it is the union’s right.

The company has the right to build assembly plants. It can build them in South Carolina or in Afghanistan if it likes. Its decision may be unwise, but it is Boeing’s.

No reaction so far that we find online from Washington’s two Democratic Senators, Sen. Maria Cantwell, who toured the state last week blasting high gasoline prices, or Sen. Patty Murray. In South Carolina, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) — whose constituents would work in the North Charleston Boeing plant — is encouraged about the Port of Charleston but has not issued a statement on the NLRB’s move.

The New York Times labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse, essays a big picture approach toward the NLRB’s move, in which Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon argues that he’s just doing his job by filing the complaint, which demands that Boeing manufacture the 787 Dreamliner in the Puget Sound area.

National columnists have lambasted the NLRB for its complaint.

• Jay Ambrose, “No end to ways unions hurt economy“
• Kathleen Parker, “The NLRB fires a shot South Carolina can’t ignore“

Politico has recently spoken with the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) President Andy Stern about the current state of the labor movement. Mr. Stern made it clear that should EFCA passes he intends to have his labor union focus their organizing effort on states in the “south and Southwest”. Most of these states have “Right to Work” laws in effect. Such laws secure the right of employees to decide for themselves whether or not to join or financially support a union. As a result, these states have traditionally not been prone to high levels of union organizing.  If EFCA passes that all may change…

The National Association of Manufacturers and BIPAC, the Business Industry Political Action Committee, held a joint news conference this morning to discuss the election results and what they mean for business with respect to an Obama Administration and new Congress.

Tom Hamburger of the Los Angeles Times asked a question about business’ strategy toward organized labor and its plans to aggressively push its agenda, especially the Employee Free Choice Act.

NAM President John Engler responded:

I think that private sector unionization is about seven-and-a-half percent of the workforce, and they’ve really maximized their role with that percentage of the workforce. There’s another 90 percent out there that we would hope we can talk to and link up with, too.

I think one of the risks for a new Obama Administration is early on get typecast anywhere, and get put in that box and to end up having, you know, the image that they’ve got seven-and-a-half percent of the workforce and they’re line of sight, but the rest of us will be dealt with later…

While they’ll want to go quickly, I think there’s a risk for the Administration, and therefore I think there will be some caution being urged on the members of Congress. I think also that some of the issues that they’re pushing are not going to be deemed to be helpful to the economy and to a recovery. They may be helpful to their treasury but not to the overall economy…

We think there are number of new members who are going to take a little broader view of things. They’re not going to be ready to get rid of all the Right to Work laws in this country and go to the International Labor Organization standards for labor, they’re not going to be willing to tip a lot of labor law on its head …

One thing is very clear on the polling on the secret ballot: 70 percent of Democrats believe that that ought to be retained, including a majority of union members that were surveyed. It’s not a way to win popular opinion early on.

In her comments, BIPAC’s Bernadette Budde made the point that organized labor was late to join the Barack Obama cause, first supporting John Edwards or some backing Senator Hillary Clinton or standing on the sidelines.

The whole exchange is below… (continue reading…)

The Wall Street Journal today examined the rise of organized labor’s political clout, growing even as union membership in the private sector wanes. The atrocious Employee Free Choice Act is the first among labor’s political demands of elected officials (Democrats), but the agenda goes much further. From “Big Labor’s Comeback“:

[Rewriting] federal law to promote union organizing is now near the top of the Democratic agenda. The main vehicle is “card check” legislation, which would eliminate the requirement for secret ballots in union elections. Unable to organize workers when employees can vote in privacy, unions want to expose those votes to peer pressure, and inevitably to public intimidation. This would arguably be the biggest change to federal labor law since the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. The Democratic House passed card check last year, and Mr. Obama has pledged his support. With a few more Senators, it might pass.

Card check is merely the start. Next on the agenda is a campaign to repeal “right to work” laws in the 22 U.S. states that have them. Right to work laws allow employees to decide for themselves whether to join or financially support a union. Former Michigan Congressman David Bonior told a union event in Denver on Monday that limiting right to work laws is essential both to lifting union membership and promoting more Democratic political victories.

In CNBC’s ranking of Top States for Business, states one through nine are right-to-work.

In other union campaign news, the reliably, reactively, left-liberal editorial page of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorializes against the Employee Free Choice Act. From “Proposed labor bill has fatal voting flaw“

EFCA has the potential to do more harm than good. Its provision allowing unions to bypass a secret ballot with something called a card check is a serious problem. Under the proposed law, unions could bypass a secret ballot if 50 percent of eligible employees signed an authorization form to form a union. It doesn’t make sense: Would you pass a school levy or elect a mayor this way? The proposed card-check system also would invite peer-pressure from union sympathizers and, by making a supporter’s name public, it has the potential to heighten the risk of employer retaliation.

The bill’s stiffer penalties for employers who retaliate illegally are welcome. But backers need to rethink the proposed card check. Even if you agree there’s an imbalance of power, doing away with the secret ballot isn’t the solution. Unions exert a great deal of influence over members. They have the ability to tax through dues. They negotiate workplace rules that govern a big chunk of members’ lives. The organizing process should be as democratic as possible. That means honoring the secret ballot, not doing away with it.

Boy, if even the Star-Tribune is opposed, you know that the unions are overplaying their hand. AND…the educational campaigns in Minnesota may well be working.