As Obama’s NLRB Drags Its Feet On Employee Charge, Former NLRB Member Drops a Boeing Bombshell

Posted by LaborUnionReport
Sunday, October 23rd at 8:30AM EDT

Most observers of President Obama’s union appointees at the National Labor Relations Board know that the NLRB has earned its much-deserved criticisms due to its over-the-top advocacy for union bosses. In addition to the other anti-worker and anti-jobs rulings, the NLRB’s effort to help the Machinists’ union kill the jobs at Boeing’s South Carolina plant because workers decertified the union is probably the most well known example. However, another layer of just how far Obama’s union appointees will go to appease their union masters was peeled back by a recent comment made by a former member of the NLRB.

Until his term expired last year, Peter Schaumber was a member of the National Labor Relations Board. Originally appointed under President Bush, Schaumber’s term extended into the era of union control within President Obama’s NLRB. As such, he has some unique insight.

According to OneNewsNow.com, like many, Schaumber does not believe that the NLRB is legally justified in attacking Boeing for opening its second production facility.

“An employer or management can make operational decisions, such as where to locate, where to relocate, where to transfer work, whether to outsource,” he remarks. “It can take into account the economic consequences of unionization. This is a core managerial right.”

What management cannot do, he explains, is make any of these decisions merely in response to their employees’ exercise of the rights under the law.

“For example, if an employer, after its employees voted for a union, [says] ‘Well, you voted for a union, [so] I’m going to relocate somewhere else.’ That would be a violation of the law,” he explains. “That has nothing to do with what Boeing did here.”

While Schaumber’s opinion on the merits of the NLRB’s case are similar to that of other legal experts, what is startling about his comments is this little gem: Apparently, at one point, the NLRB’s Acting General Counsel (who is prosecuting the government’s case against Boeing) did not believe the case should be at the NLRB at all.

“According to Michael Luttig, who’s a former federal judge and general counsel of Boeing, before the complaint was filed, Lafe Solomon — who is the [NLRB] acting general counsel — told him that this matter shouldn’t be before the board at all. Nevertheless, he asked Boeing to give the union something, to settle with the union, over its charge that it filed with the board, and if Boeing settled with the union, Solomon wouldn’t file a complaint.”

When Boeing made an offer, Solomon said it was unacceptable to the union. Afterwards, the NLRB filed the complaint against Boeing.

While Solomon has stated in the past that there were NLRB-encouraged settlement talks between Boeing and the union, that Solomon did not believe the case should be before the NLRB is astounding as it shows the depths to which the Obama NLRB has become nothing more than a union hammer with which unions beat employers over the heads and kill more jobs.

This also seems to explain why the union bureaucrats running the NLRB appear to be dragging their feet in investigating the charge filed in June by a South Carolina Boeing employee for the union’s retaliation against South Carolina employees’ for their decertification of the union.