WashingtonExaminer.com
Why has private-sector unionization fallen from 35 percent of the work force during World War II to less than 7 percent today? The main reason is that unions raise a firms labor costs leaving fewer resources for things like job creation capital improvements and research and development.
Unions also make it much harder for owners and executives to make practical business decisions. A memo leaked from the National Labor Relations Board makes clear that President Obama and the radical labor advocates he put on it are embarked on a calculated campaign to make unionized firms even harder to manage. The NLRBs recent suit against Boeing Aircraft Co. is merely the first step.
The board sued Boeing for opening a factory in South Carolina a right-to-work state. Boeings main plant is in Washington a state where employees have no choice but to join unions. Its also where the International Association of Machinists has struck Boeing five times in 30 years most recently in 2008. That strike cost Boeing $2 billion and prompted longtime customers like Virgin Airways chief Richard Branson to make plans to take his business elsewhere. With the new plant 1000 jobs were created in South Carolina but no union jobs in Washington were lost.
The NLRB calls that decision an unfair labor practice that violates the National Labor Relations Act. The Supreme Court however said in its 1981 First National Maintenance Corp. v. NLRB decision that the NLRA limited the mandate or duty to bargain of unionized firms to matters of wages hours and other terms and conditions of employment. The court also held that Congress had no expectation that the elected union representative at First National would become an equal partner in the running of the business enterprise. Firms must be able to reach decisions without fear of later evaluations labeling its conduct an unfair labor practice the court concluded.
Obamas NLRB doesnt give a hoot what the Supreme Court ruled. Not only is the NLRB standing firm in its Boeing suit but the leaked memo which was obtained by the Heritage Foundations Hans von Spakovsky and James Sherk also shows that the board seeks to elevate union officials to equal partners with executives in corporate boardrooms of all unionized firms.
The memo instructs NLRB regional operatives to flag all cases in which unionized firms made relocation decisions without submitting detailed economic justifications to their unions. The board plans case-by-case reviews followed by prosecutions of selected cases. The intended consequence is that all major business decisions will become subject to approval by unions.
Soviet Communist Party theoretician Leon Trotsky wrote this in 1931: The workers need control not for platonic purposes but in order to exert practical influence upon the production and commercial operations of the employers. ... In a developed form workers control thus implies a sort of economic dual power in the factory. Were Trotsky still around he would no doubt cheer Obamas NLRB.
