NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — Union organizers fell far short on Wednesday in a bid to enlist workers at Boeing’s South Carolina facilities in what was widely viewed as an early test of labor’s strength in the Trump era.þþOrganizers with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers failed to persuade a majority of about 3,000 union-eligible Boeing workers in the state to vote for the union amid enormous pressure from management.þþBoeing said 74 percent of the more than 2,800 workers voting rejected the union.þþMany analysts say that Boeing decided to put its second Dreamliner aircraft assembly line in the state to reduce the leverage of the machinists’ union, which represents Boeing’s work force in the Puget Sound region of Washington State and has used work stoppages to exact concessions from the company in the past. South Carolina is one of the least unionized states in the country.þþHoyt N. Wheeler, an emeritus professor of business at the University of South Carolina who taught labor relations and employment law, said in an interview before the vote that a victory would be “highly significant” because “one of Boeing’s motivations for coming to South Carolina was to escape the union.”þþThe election took on added significance because of the emphasis President Trump has placed on domestic manufacturing, and on Boeing in particular. The president has called out the company over the cost of the new Air Force One program it is developing, and he recently sought to pit Boeing against Lockheed Martin to hold down the cost of the F-35 fighter jet.þþOn Friday, Boeing will unveil its newest Dreamliner, the 787-10, a larger model being built exclusively in North Charleston, at a ceremony Mr. Trump is set to attend.þþThe union vote came almost two years after the machinists called off a scheduled vote at Boeing’s South Carolina facilities amid what they described as widespread misinformation from management and unrelenting pressure from local politicians.þþThat setback capped a stretch of high-profile losses for unions across the South. Workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., narrowly voted down a union in 2014. In 2011, production and maintenance workers at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco in North Carolina narrowly rejected a union, the third defeat in an organizing effort that had gone on for more than six and a half years.þþIn South Carolina, interviews with Boeing workers suggested that the union had a chance of succeeding because the company had failed to defuse some of the frustrations it had promised to address before the previously scheduled vote.þþChief among them was what workers described as management’s unfair approach to evaluating workers and handing out raises and promotions.þþBoeing production workers are evaluated on a scale from one to five, and everyone who earns a five is expected to receive the largest raise. But Al Reatz, who retired from Boeing as a manager in September, said senior managers often withheld the top rating from some workers even when they met the supposedly objective criteria for receiving it.þþWorkers also complained that instructions for performing their jobs seemed to change from month to month and said that a union could bring more consistency to their work lives, a sentiment Mr. Reatz echoed.þþ“The union also affects your immediate managers,” he said in a recorded message to workers at a pro-union rally on Monday. “They can start coming in in the mornings, and they’ll also know what they’re doing each day.”þþIn addition to fairer evaluations and more consistent work instructions, the union’s aims included higher wages for production and maintenance workers in South Carolina, who make about $23 per hour on average, versus about $31 per hour for comparable workers in Washington State.þþBut in the end, Boeing’s efforts to defeat the organizing campaign proved too strong to overcome. The company implied to workers that a union would drive a wedge between them and management, which the union strongly disputed. Organizers said that workers could seek the help of a union steward if they had a problem on the job but that they would otherwise be free to deal with managers on their own.þþBoeing also dwelled on the machinists’ union’s opposition to its 2009 decision to open a second Dreamliner assembly line in South Carolina. At the time, the union argued that opening the plant would undermine the protected right to strike of tens of thousands of Boeing workers in Washington State, and the machinists filed a charge against the company with the National Labor Relations Board.þþA group closely tied to the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, of which Boeing is a member, ran a series of hard-edge ads opposing the union organizing effort, including one depicting the machinists as a casino boss who wanted workers to gamble away their future.þþBefore the election, Boeing officials speculated that the union had sought to hold the vote before Mr. Trump appointed two new members to the N.L.R.B., which would give Republicans a majority that might be more sympathetic to objections from the company about the conduct of the election (and less so to any union appeal).þþMike Evans, the lead local organizer for the machinists’ union, disputed that, saying the union had moved to hold the vote because it believed it had finally built sufficient support among workers.þþBut the board’s changing partisan makeup could be a factor in future organizing efforts. In addition to being more sympathetic to objections from management and more skeptical of charges filed by workers, a Republican board could undo rules enacted in 2015 to expedite the election process, a move widely viewed as helping organizers.þþ
Source: NY Times
