The National Labor Relations Board’s flimsy case against Boeing in South Carolina rests on the notion of “retribution.” The International Association of Machinists union charges that Boeing is punishing that union for past strikes by opening a new plant in South Carolina, and the Obama NLRB agrees with the IAM. The case is unprecedented and threatens right to work laws nationwide.
But what if the IAM is trying to unionize those South Carolina workers, hinting that it can get the NLRB to scuttle the case if they’ll just join the union and send a slice of their paychecks the union’s way?
That seems to be exactly what’s going on.
[Anthony] Riedel (of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation) said workers have been told — or they have been led to believe — that if they unionize, IAM leadership will get the NLRB to drop the controversial complaint against Boeing.
Should the NLRB drop that case, Boeing jobs at the new South Carolina plant would no longer be in jeopardy.
“They [unions] want to stay relevant, they want forced dues already, and what better way to do that than to promise job security?” Riedel told TheDC. “They’re saying, ‘Hey, we know the guys out in Seattle. They’re our brothers.’ They’d broker a deal with them and save their jobs if they let them back in and let them have some of their paycheck.”
How is this not blackmail?
And if the union is colluding with the NLRB on the case, how is this not the definition of corruption?
A former IAM local president says she has heard about the conversations.
Current Boeing employee and former IAM local president Cynthia Ramaker confirmed similar details during a phone interview with TheDC. Ramaker said union bosses have been promising workers, albeit indirectly and by implication, that IAM can persuade the NLRB to drop its case against Boeing if workers agree to be unioinized.
“Those exact words haven’t been said,” she cautions. “But what I’m hearing from the workers — there have been a lot of insinuations [like]: ‘It makes us one big happy family.’ It’s a lot of double-talk and leading you to believe one thing. But the actual words, they’re not saying. But they’re all but saying that.”
Ramaker adds that a few employees have begun wearing pro-union t-shirts to work, something that South Carolinians working for Boeing had never seen before.
The South Carolina Boeing Dreamliner plant would employ 11,000 workers, which is a lot of paychecks for the IAM — an affiliate of the AFL-CIO — to skim and funnel back to Democrat campaign coffers.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member