Boeing Case: How Unions are Discouraging Companies to Set-up Business in America?

There is no point in coming back to the chronology of the IAM-NLRB-Boeing case nor to the underlying interests of some stakeholders in the SEIU – Sodexo case anymore than we already did. What we would like to do in this article is to open the debate on the consequences of these events on the American business.

Entrepreneurs (both Americans and foreign ones) know that our American principles have been based on two pillars: free enterprise and a free country. Recent events in our country could change this perception. In the IAM-Boeing case, the NLRB filled a complaint against the airplane manufacturer on the basis that the company’s decision to locate its second production line had not been made on rational arguments (e.g.: diversifying its production centers) but had been a retaliation against past strikes led by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers at Boeing’s plant in Everett, WA. Following the fuss made by the complaint, the NLRB felt obliged to explain that it did not order Boeing to relocate the second production line to Washington – yet this explanation was hardly convincing. A state agency that tells a company where and what to manufacture was the model adopted by some countries but had never been in place in America until now.

The NLRB and the unions do not think on a long-term basis. The impact of the IAM-Boeing case is huge. If a company cannot choose where to locate its production in the US, the question will be raised whether to locate it abroad. Boeing could have chosen to locate the second production line in Mexico but they picked up South Carolina, creating 1,000 jobs by the way.

In the SEIU-Sodexo case, the union has been going after the company to become the representative union of its 120,000 employees (which means collecting the 120,000 annual memberships). To do so, the union has tried to tarnish the company reputation, to make it lose contracts and put it under increasing pressure. What they do not tell is that when a client decides to terminate its contract with Sodexo, employees’ contracts are also terminated or they are put under a probationary period as this is going to be the case for all non-managerial employees of Sodexo at the Western Washington University in the coming weeks. In the end, the SEIU is weakening American workers, putting them at risk of losing their jobs.

In both cases, American jobs are being jeopardized at a time when the economic crisis is not over yet and unemployment rate is still high. We should rather fight for our jobs instead of destroying them and our economy as unions are doing, for their short-term profits.

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