NLRB Proving Ayn Rand Was Right

Via Hot Air:

The Denver Post editorial board weighs in with some rather blunt questions:

With the economy still limping, and President Obama promising to create jobs, why on earth are his appointees killing jobs in South Carolina?

A common refrain among recession-weary Americans is that we don’t make anything in this country anymore. However, workers in South Carolina have a chance to make something — Boeing 787 Dreamliners that would be flown around the world — and yet Obama’s labor-cozy appointees to the National Labor Relations Board are intent on scuttling it.

Boeing, a vital U.S. company, wants to build a plant in South Carolina and bring good-paying manufacturing jobs to the state. They’ve already poured billions into the facilities and have hired 1,000 workers. But the NLRB filed a lawsuit last month to force Boeing back to Washington state, where workers would be represented by a union. The NLRB claims Boeing decided to open a non-union plant in South Carolina in retaliation for past strikes in Washington.

So what if it did?

The NLRB’s action is beyond unsettling. The lawsuit, in effect, is an effort to tell an American company how to operate its business and to intimidate its officers.

Over at The Hill, Representative Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) casts the situation in a stark light:

This is the first time in history the NLRB has argued that a company is violating federal law simply based on where they choose to locate a factory.

Now keep in mind, Boeing wasn’t moving jobs to South Carolina and they weren’t laying off employees in Washington. Rather, they opted to build and operate a new factory in South Carolina.

Did the cost of labor play a role in their decision to open this factory in South Carolina? Of course it did. Just as, I’m sure, state tax rates and property value also played a role in their decision.

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Rep. Westmoreland identifies the unelected bureaucrat spearheading the NLRB's new hostility toward private enterprise and economic liberty:

Even with a Democrat controlled Senate, President Obama couldn’t get Craig Becker approved to head the NLRB because of his connections to labor unions and his career as an attorney for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). So, as he has done before when he can’t get his way in Congress, the president opted to sidestep the constitutional authority of the Senate to approve his appointments and gave Becker a recess appointment.

So, Obama went to extraordinary lengths to get Becker on the NLRB which should make clear that that both men are of a like mind when it comes to labor relations. Let's review who Craig Becker is and why even some Democrats couldn't openly support his appointment:

From Discover The Networks:

Becker's views are simple: no American employed anywhere should have the right to resist being part of a labor union. While acknowledging that "[a]t first blush it might seem fair to give workers the choice to remain unrepresented," he explains: "Just as U.S. citizens cannot opt against having a congressman, workers should not be able to choose against having a union as their monopoly-bargaining agent." ...

To end workers' self-imposed disenfranchisement, Becker has considered doing away with union elections altogether, or instituting a "reform" to "mandate employee representation" under a system where the only "question posed on the ballot would simply be which representative" would be named as union leader. In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, Becker rejected both possibilities on the grounds that "each would require fundamental statutory revision unlikely in the foreseeable future."...

Becker has sought to change this, from top to bottom. He believes the NLRB should strip companies of the right to speak out against unionization at work; bar them from preventing -- or even protesting -- voting fraud; and deny them nearly all right to petition the NLRB. He contends that management should not be allowed to talk about the dangers of unionization on company grounds, as the law has allowed since the 1930s, because in his view employees constitute a "captive audience." Yet he raises no objection to aggressive union organizers stalking workers from the parking lot to their homes. Becker is straightforward in his view that "employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees' election of representatives," and that "employers should have no right to raise questions concerning voter eligibility or campaign conduct."

Under Becker's proposed rules, ineligible voters -- possibly full-time union employees who do not work for the company -- could show up on election day, cast their ballots for SEIU, and if the firm ever found out, it would have no means of recourse. Becker argues that entrepreneurs lack "the formal status either of candidates vying to represent employees or of voters"; he believes they simply exist to pay the wages that unions demand. Should they object, Becker advocates curtailing businesses' right to contest NLRB rulings in federal circuit court.

From Red State:

Before going into the another, fairly-recent example of a union-run bureaucracy run amok, let’s review some of President Obama’s union-controlled NLRB’s actions to date:

• Prosecuting an employer for opting to open a non-union assembly plant
• Suing states whose voters prefer secret ballots over card check
• Finding an employer guilty of unfair labor practices for not letting off-duty workers of a contractor on to the employer’s property
• Giving unions the okay to let their union supporters threaten non-union supporters with physical violence
• Moving to humiliate employers, as well as giving unions access to employees and property
• Considering forcing all NLRA-covered employers to post notices telling employee how to unionize
• Contemplating letting unions unionize workers into micro-unions
• Undermining union-free employees by giving unions (and employers) the right to negotiate “sweetheart deals” (before the union represents said employees) in exchange for unionizing employees

Of course, as the NLRB has become union bosses’ go-to agency to enact an agenda that they couldn’t otherwise get through Congress, there are other NLRB actions than just these that are listed.

"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed." — Ayn Rand