GOP Senators Intro Bill To Protect SC Boeing Facility

By Andrea Salazar

A group of Republican senators urged Congress Wednesday to pass a bill limiting the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) ability to shut down a Boeing Company facility in South Carolina.

The Acting General Counsel of the NLRB issued a formal complaint against Boeing alleging that it “violated federal labor law by deciding to transfer a second airplane production line from a union facility in the state of Washington to a non-union facility in South Carolina for discriminatory reasons.”

Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), John Thune (R-S.D), Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) warned against shutting down the South Carolina plant fearing negative economic effects.

“We want to make it easier for Boeing and Motorola and Westinghouse and Nissan and Toyota to build in the United States what they sell in the United States,” Alexander said. “NLRB’s action is making it easier for manufacturers to look at the United States and say, ‘We’re going to build overseas’.”

The bill, introduced by Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), would “prohibit the National Labor Relations Board from ordering any employer to close, relocate or transfer employment under any circumstance.”

“It’ll be hard to continue to make products in America if the NLRB can tell a company after they make an investment, ‘By the way, we’re going to veto your decision’,” Graham said. “The amount of power that this would give an unelected bureaucracy in an American economy is chilling.”