Monday, March 16, 2015

Machinists File With National Labor Relations Board to Hold Union Election at Boeing’s South Carolina Plant: Up to 2,400 workers would vote on unionization

The Wall Street Journal
By Jon Ostrower

Updated March 16, 2015 3:19 p.m. ET


Boeing Co.’s biggest union filed with the National Labor Relations Board for a vote on unionizing 2,400 workers at Boeing’s South Carolina plant, a move that could stoke new tension in the aerospace giant’s long-standing battle with organized labor.

The NLRB would need to review Monday’s filing by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers to determine if the requirements for a unionization vote have been met. A spokesman for the IAM said the agency would set a date for any election after that review.

The vote plan is the latest round in years of battling over the plant in North Charleston, S.C., Boeing’s first nonunion plant for commercial jet assembly, which the company selected nearly six years ago after several strikes by work at its main manufacturing base in Washington state.

The IAM said the central concerns of the staff at the South Carolina plant, which makes and assembles major parts of its long-range 787 Dreamliner, include mandatory overtime, fair wages, and “lack of respect on the shop floor.” The site has struggled to achieve a regular production tempo and Boeing has increased overtime to get caught up.

Boeing said the vote is a decision for employees on whether to “turn over their rights to the IAM or keep a direct relationship with the company.” Boeing said it has established a website, a Facebook page, and other outlets to give employees its views on the IAM’s efforts. The IAM has launched its own social media efforts as well.

Boeing, ahead of Monday’s filing, had waged a vocal campaign to dissuade its employees from supporting a vote, enlisting local leaders like Gov. Nikki Haley and other officials to speak out against the unionization effort. South Carolina has the second lowest rates of unionization in the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with 2.2% of workers belonging to organized labor.

The IAM criticized Gov. Haley in its statement and said that “Boeing workers have a legal right to an election process that is free of intimidation and harassment.”

Boeing in January assigned veteran executive Beverly Wyse to run the South Carolina operations, replacing a retiring executive whom IAM organizers had cited as the root of worker grievances. Ms. Wyse, in addition to having significant experience managing production acceleration, has historically had a better relationship with Boeing’s organized workforce, having run its single-aisle 737 program in Renton, Wash.

“Boeing South Carolina teammates have done what so many people said couldn’t be done,” Ms. Wyse said in Boeing’s statement Monday. Now, she said, the union has “begun to divide our team at a time when we’re just beginning to jell and catch a solid rhythm in production.”

It is unclear how long the NLRB’s decision will take. The agency will first review the IAM’s filing and could hold a hearing to determine if an election is warranted—or secure a consent order between the IAM and Boeing to move ahead with an election, though that seems unlikely given Boeing’s response.

The South Carolina plant has given Boeing important leverage in dealing with its unions, and it has steadily expanded the East Coast operation. It first acquired two struggling suppliers at the South Carolina site in 2008 and 2009, and soon after selected it for what is now a sprawling assembly facility that built about 5% of Boeing’s commercial jetliners last year. That share is expected to climb in the years to come.

The IAM previously represented workers in the two suppliers’ plants, but the workforce in 2009 voted to decertify the union at the site a month before Boeing’s selection of it for 787 assembly.

The factory has been a political flash point before. In 2011, the NLRB ruled the selection of the North Charleston plant was in retaliation for a roughly two-month strike by IAM members in 2008. The NLRB ruling, which never altered Boeing’s plans for the site, triggered Republican criticism of the Obama administration during the Republican presidential primary.

Boeing and the IAM at the end of 2011 negotiated a new contract that would keep production of single-aisle jets in unionized facilities in Washington state. The union withdrew its complaint with the NLRB shortly after.

Early last year, Boeing and the IAM in Washington state narrowly agreed on a revised contract that would guarantee its 777X jetliner and its carbon-composite wings would be assembled in unionized facilities. In exchange, the company secured major health-care and retirement-benefit concessions from the workforce starting in 2016.

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