The following remarks were delivered by Congressman Duncan on the floor of the House on 9-15-11:
Mr. Speaker:
I rise in support of H.R. 2587, and I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
The Boeing Company, which operates a huge manufacturing plant in Puget Sound, Washington, has built a new production line for its 787 Dreamliner fleet in South Carolina.
There has been no coinciding announcement of layoffs at the Puget Sound facility. In fact, not a single job was lost in the State of Washington as a result of Boeing’s decision.
On the contrary, Boeing has added an additional 2,000 jobs in Puget Sound since that time.
Yet the National Labor Relations Board decided that Boeing was harming the labor unions in Washington by not building their new facility in that state.
No department or agency of the federal government has ever told any business that it could not or even should not move from one state to another without demonstrating the type of violation alleged in its case.
For the National Labor Relations Board to tell Boeing that it could not move from Washington to South Carolina with no substantive evidence of anti-union hostility is an unprecedented dictatorial power grab that makes people wonder if we still live in a free Country.
If the shoe was on the other foot—if a conservative majority on the NLRB told a company that it could not move from a basically non-union state to a heavily unionized state, those who are opposing this bill would be screaming to the high heavens.
This action by the NLRB will stifle economic growth all across this Nation and could cause more American companies to go to other countries or discourage businesses from moving here in the first place.
I am certain that those who created the NLRB could never have imagined that a future board would make such an extreme, radical decision such as this.
The NLRB was not set up to be a one-sided, unfair, biased agency that was set up just to protect unions. It was and is supposed to be a fair, impartial, non-political arbiter between labor and management, businesses and unions.
Every member who represents a right-to-work state such as my State of Tennessee, should be very concerned about this decision.
Boeing had a 39-day strike in 2008 that cost the company an estimated two billion dollars.
The CEO of Boeing Commercial told the Seattle Times last year: “We can’t afford to have a work stoppage every three years. And we can’t afford to continue the rate of escalation of wages.”
This administration claims to be concerned about jobs. Just a few weeks ago the Washington Post had a poll that showed 82% of the American people believe it is either very hard (49%) or somewhat hard (33%) to find a job.
Now unelected power-mad bureaucrats at the NLRB, who do not have to worry about their jobs, have made a decision that will stifle job creation and business growth and expansion all over this Country.
We should pass this bill and overturn this shortsighted decision that could possibly protect some jobs in Washington but will ultimately hurt working people all through the rest of this Nation.
