Newswise — “When Boeing shifted work from Washington state to South Carolina in retaliation for strike activity, it was following global trend. And, in doing so, Boeing acted in clear violation of the National Labor Relations Act, which makes it an unfair labor practice to retaliate against workers who are engaged in protected concerted activity, including strikes.
“Plant closing threats, production shifts, outsourcing and privatization – these have become the weapons of choice today for the nation’s largest employers, both private and public, to try intimidate workers from organizing where they are not yet organized and eliminate unions where they already are organized. Threats occur in 57 percent of NLRB elections, and 15 percent follow through on those threats and actually shut down after the election.
“The board has a history of ruling plant closing threats to be labor law violations if the union is able to prove that the threat occurred, but the penalty is only a posting. Rulings in the case of actual plant closings have been much rarer.
“The employer has clearly moved work in retaliation for strike activity. The question is whether our courts will ever have the courage to enforce worker rights under the National Labor Relations Act when it comes to facility closure.” --Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University senior lecturer at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
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