Pelosi: NLRB Should Shut Boeing Plant Down Or Force It to Unionize
The biggest special interest of all flexes its muscles.
by John Hayward
11/01/2011
Writing at RedState, blogger LaborUnionReport highlights this amazing interview with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi from last week, in which she declares that Boeing should be forced by the government to close down its non-union South Carolina plant, although she mercifully adds, “I would hope that they would make it union” to avoid this fate.
To listen to this bitch, click here.
LaborUnionReport is willing to cut Pelosi a little slack and allow that she might just be an uninformed boob spouting off about something she doesn’t understand at all:
In fairness, Pelosi’s advisers may have neglected to tell the former speaker that the South Carolina plant was once unionized before employees chose to exercise their rights to become union-free. Her advisers may have also neglected to tell the former speaker that the only reason the Machinists union likely filed charges against Boeing is because those employees chose to exercise their rights to become union free–which would be unlawful retaliation on the part of the union.
[Of course, the NLRB seems to be dragging its feet on the union's retaliation as it may complicate things for the union-run agency--like how the NLRB has allowed itself to become a union pawn and allow its prosecutorial process to become a joke by going after Boeing instead of the union for its apparent retaliaton.]
This story really caught my attention because there’s so much anger at “special interests” these days. Why, people have taken over public parks and converted them into squalid dens of iniquity and circular drumming to protest the way working Americans are getting screwed by special interests.
Well, here is the ultimate, 190-proof, straight-up-no-chaser example of special interest politics. The woman who was once Speaker of the House - and will resume the position if people are foolish enough to vote her party back into power next year - just declared that raw government power should be used, in defiance of the law, to literally destroy a private entity that refused to cooperate with the demands of the most powerful special interest there is.
Labor unions are almost wholly dependent upon the corrupt use of government power to maintain their riches. They don’t just use political contributions to cadge a few favors here and there from the political elite. Labor unions are mega-corporations, and their entire business model, as currently construed, depends on using government power to rig the marketplace against their competitors. That would be you, if you don’t belong to a union.
Destroying the South Carolina Boeing plant would wipe out a good 4,000 jobs, on behalf of a corporate entity that sells extravagantly overpriced labor to other corporate entities. Here’s a little snapshot of the mega-corporation in question, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, courtesy of an informative March 2011 look at Big Labor by Fox News:
IAM, which grew out of a secret meeting of 19 machinists in a Georgia rail yard in 1888, represents machinists and aerospace workers in over 200 industries. At the union’s Maryland headquarters near Washington, 34 officers and employees earn over $200,000 in salary and benefits. Robert Buffenbarger, who became president in 1997, received $284,975. Over the past two years, the IAM donated $1.98 million to Democratic candidates and $34,000 to Republicans. Popularly known as the machinists union, IAM is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Its membership jumped in the 1950s and 1960s with the growth of the airlines and aerospace industries. More than 1 million belonged to the union in 1968. In the early 1970s, membership began declining, a change the union blames on layoffs in the defense industry.
How about it, Occupiers? Are you really against “special interests,” or not?
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To read another article by John Hayward, click here.
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