Neither side is budging in an increasingly bitter fight over aerospace giant Boeing’s plans to start production on its 787 Dreamliner fleet at a new $2 billion plant in South Carolina — a move the National Labor Relations Board says was made to punish the company’s union workers.
In its defense, Boeing notes that it isn’t cutting jobs or production in the Puget Sound area of Washington state and has added more than 2,000 positions there since the 2009 decision to open a second production plant elsewhere.
“If this is Boeing’s way of intimidating employees,” said Fred Wszolek, spokesman for Workforce Fairness Institute, an advocacy group that has long been critical of the NLRB, “it sure seems like a strange way of going about it.”
But the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Seattle, backed by the NLRB, wants the second facility to be based in Washington as well. They argue that Boeing originally planned to build the plant there, and that the company changed its mind to punish the union for past strikes. They have videotapes they think can prove this allegation.
“The key thing here is motivation,” said NLRB spokeswoman Nancy Cleeland. “In our complaint, we allege they made it very clear to the union members they were doing this to retaliate against them.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... ar/?page=2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;“We’ve been upfront about the fact that one of those reasons [for the South Carolina plant] had to do with the history of strikes we have had in Puget Sound,” Boeing spokesman Tim Neale said. “We believe that legally companies are entitled to take things like labor history into account when deciding where to invest.”
