Back in 1969, John Lennon famously wrote, "All we are saying is give peace a chance."
Well, here in May 2011, while labor peace is not always at hand, maybe we can at least give labor truth a chance. Unfortunately, telling the truth seems to be increasingly difficult for the CEOs of our multinational corporations when talking about "Making It In America" and saving and creating American jobs. And Exhibit A right now is Jim McNerney, who is the Chairman, President and CEO of the Boeing Company.
The reason I am picking on Mr. McNerney is that he is defending Boeing's decision to retaliate against its union workforce in Everett, Washington, by moving thousands of jobs to a non-union location in South Carolina, with statements that are among the most misleading and disingenuous by a major American CEO ever. And I've been around long enough to have heard a lot of statements by a lot of big company CEOs.
Compounding my dismay with Mr. McNerney is that he also happens to currently hold a very senior economic advisory position in the Obama administration as head of the President's "Export Council." He holds this position of crucial influence despite the fact that for years he's been exporting thousands of his American manufacturing jobs to Mexico and China.
The facts of this dispute are pretty simple.
As reported by Hal Weitzman and Jeremy Lemer in the Financial Times, "nineteen [Republican] Senators are threatening to block President Barack Obama's two appointments to the National Labor Relations Board...after the organisation filed a complaint last month against Boeing that seeks to force the manufacturer to transfer 787 production from the non-union factory in South Carolina to its unionised facilities in the Seattle region." The NLRB believes that Boeing selected South Carolina -- a right-to-work state -- purely in retaliation for a strike in 2008 at the Everett facility.
To attack the NLRB's conclusion, Mr. McNerney, in a preferentially placed op-ed in the Wall Street Journal , said the following (the underscoring is mine):
"We viewed Everett as an attractive option and engaged voluntarily in talks with union officials to see if we could make the business case work. Among the considerations we sought were a long-term 'no-strike clause'.
"Despite months of effort...union leaders couldn't meet expectations on our key issues.
"We hold no animus toward union members, and we have never sought to threaten or punish them for exercising their rights, as the NLRB claims. About 40% of our 155,000 U.S. employees are represented by unions - a ratio unchanged since 2003."
Now, for the truth:
Jim McNerney's very public and cynical efforts, however, are just another egregious example of the broad opportunism that many American multinational corporation CEOs have embraced in their continuing efforts to offshore American jobs, cut the wages and benefits of the American workers whose jobs are not being shipped overseas, and, whenever they can, BUST UNIONS.
As reported by David Wessel (Wall Street Journal, 4-19-11), "U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy." According to the Commerce Department, these companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the last decade while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, which is a big shift from the '90s when they added 4.4 million jobs in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad. In just the year 2009, they cut 1.2 million, or 5.3%, of their workers in the U.S. but only 100,000, or 1.5%, of their workers abroad. Three highlights:
McNerney and his fellow CEOs tout many global 'differentials' as the reasons why they've been economically 'downgrading' some jobs (with moves to South Carolina and other right-to-work states) and offshoring others (to China and elsewhere). Wessel further wrote that American multinationals repeatedly say in justification that it is the "combination of the U.S. tax code, the declining state of U.S. infrastructure, the quality of the country's education system, and barriers to the immigration of skilled workers [that is] making the U.S. less attractive to multinationals." Yet it is these very multinationals which every day support and maintain these differentials by:
At the end of the day, as I noted earlier, what's really going on here is a massive, nation-wide attempt to bust unions in order to further enrich our nation's multinational corporations. Yet this is happening at precisely the point in time when the United States needs millions more, not millions fewer, union jobs in order to stabilize our middle class.
For our country to be ascendant again, American workers everywhere -- at Boeing and hundreds of other major corporations -- must be treated as the highly skilled, enormously productive and wealth-producing 'assets' they are. We need more union-made quality goods to sell abroad and many more union paychecks producing fair incomes here at home if we are to grow ourselves out of the dismal ongoing jobless recovery we are experiencing.
Expanding union membership will be one of the surest signposts on the road back to a vibrant, consuming middle class, more income equality, and fairness in employment. And when we have all of this again, along with fairer trade practices, our nation will prosper as it did for the half century before unfair globalization and union-busting practices began to run amok twenty or so years ago.
In all of our manufacturing industries -- not just in aircraft manufacturing -- we must ensure that American workers compete on level-playing fields. Right now, however, our workers are forced to compete against foreign workers, many of whom work for American multinational corporations, who are the indirect beneficiaries of illegal subsidies, massive currency manipulation and shameful environmental practices that swamp any measure of true country 'comparative advantage'. All the while here at home, with very limited mobility in general but especially in this distressed economy, workers must confront the enormous power that multinational corporations' almost unlimited geographic, capital and technology mobility gives them.
The members of America's unions are skilled, resilient and tenacious. They did not win the 40-hour work week, benefits and safer working conditions in one fell swoop. These integral pathways and others to the middle class lifestyle -- a lifestyle that is now being challenged in so many of our cities and towns -- were hammered out over years of negotiations with very powerful corporations. And sometimes these women and men had to strike to ensure fair dealing. But in exchange for their skills, hard work and productivity, these unionized workers produce real wealth that's been shared for generations across our entire economy and society.
I can't envision a day when unions don't represent the best path to fair and balanced dealing between companies and workers, for without union voices workers have little or no say in their future. And no worker anywhere should have to work without organizing protections, which is why Jim McNerney's and Boeing's demand that Boeing workers now agree to "a long-term no-strike clause" is so obviously unfair.
Leo Hindery, Jr. is Chairman of the US Economy/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Currently an investor in media companies, he is the former CEO of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), Liberty Media and their successor AT&T Broadband. He also serves on the Board of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund.
Follow Leo Hindery, Jr. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/leohindery
How's that outsourcing of American union jobs on the 787 (Seven Late Seven) "Nightmareliner " working out for you, Sir?
For over five decades Boeing's highly productive and innovative "unionized" workforce in the Pacific NorthWest created the greatest commercial airliners the mankind had ever flown.
I was fortunate to have commanded every one of those magnificent flying machines during my 40 year commercial career as an airline pilot.
Then greed, right wing extremism and stupidity took over the Boeing's Boardroom in Chicago.
In order to destroy the unions on the property they totally outsourced the design and manufacturing of their newest state of the art creation overseas!
The extremely educated, tech savvy and productive workers in Washington State agreed to match every Penny of those so called savings to the company in wage reductions and productivity increases in order to preserve American jobs in America. The vindictive and hardline management refused to listen. They literarily drove the unions into a costly strike.
The rest is a sad story at once a proud American manufacturing company. Despite the fantastic enthusiasm and reception by the customer airlines, 787 may go the same route Concord traveled. I suspect it may even take Boeing down with it!
I just wonder if it was such a great idea, Mr. McNerney?
Captain Ross "Rusty" Aimer
UAL Ret.
ATP B-777/767/757/747/737/727/720/707/DC-10/-9/-8/EMB-500
Isn't this what we want business to do?
Real Patriots understand that American Citizens are far more important than some multinational corporation that cares only for bottom lines and members of the Board.
Unions have not lost their place, in fact, they are needed now more than ever. We are turning into the Mexico for Europe.
South Carolina is a 'right to work' state.
The author is spot on with his comments.
Boeing violated long held promises to its workers.
This undermines every worker in the United States. Where's your patriotism?
If it was arguing that it located it's second plant in South Carolina to diversify against the risk of a West Coast earthquake, or volcano would there be a problem?
The NLRB went way too far, and I support unions.
First- the Boeing case- the machinists union is clearly retaliating against the now non-union workers in the SC plant, since they voted to DECERTIFY the union. Just as Boeing retailating against their union workers striking is illegal, so is the union retaliating against their former workers who voted to recertify them.
That aside, unions no longer "represent the best path to fair and balanced dealing between companies and workers, for without union voices workers have little or no say in their future. " How anyone, even the most hardened union member, could think that in 2011 unions could represent a fair and balanced dealing between companies and workers. They have become a hijacker that takes over their employers with legal backing and thuggery.
As a manufacturing engineer, after seeing the two unions in action at my last two jobs, I will continue to speak out against them.
The sad reality is unions will cure (disappear) themselves. The question remains how many companies will they take with them during the process.
Companies want nothing more than to increase profits.. and that in itself is good cause that is why they are in business, understood... but if they do not pay their workers- who with their skill and comitment enable the profit to be made - enough to live on.. enough to save a few bucks and send the kids to school then the whole economy will see the effects.. Union workers historically have been the highest skilled and most productive and have been instrumental in many safety and work practices that we all take for granted today..
now it seems many folks would like to see the standard of living shrink to the lowest denominator, rather that seeing all rise..
It seems there is a decidedly un-American slant to Obama's advisory panel when you add in Jeffery Imelt of GE, who exports jobs from America quicker than a cat can do what's natural for cats to do.
The coincidence of these mens corporate memberships in the CFR, my favorite (not !) globalist Governance slam the door on freedoms and prosperity group is surly just that, a mere coincidence.
So what they represent corporate powers of the MIC, it's only right that Obama hand picked these stalwarts of industry to lead his blue ribbon panel on job creation.
Unions, whom I feel should exist on a local employee/ employer level are angry because a Freeman no long HAS to join to have a job. But a Union does make the employer more likely to play fair, or at least they did at one time.
Neither Imelt, nor McNerney have sterling reputations as jobs builders, Imelts GE has lost nearly 30,000 American jobs this year alone. One wonders what Obama is thinking, and that adds to the wonder, Who's really the boss?
Odds don't look good for you.
Doubtful we will ever see hard working union memebers.