McNerney is very angry at the NLRB ‘s* claim that the plant is being built in “retaliation” against Union represented employees in Washington State. The company would never do such a thing McNerney says in a Wall Street Journal article today. Boeing is "Not anti-Union" and the decision to move to SC is purely a business decision, nothing more than that.
The problem is an economic one, “We make decisions on work placement based on business principles----not out of emotion or spite.” Says McNerney and the NLRB’s, demand that the decision to move be reversed, is a “fundamental assault on the capitalist principles that have sustained America’s competitiveness” over the past 140 years. In fact Boeing was considering building the plant in Everett Washington and was negotiating with the Union about it but negotiations broke down.
Boeing wanted a “long-term no strike clause that would ensure production stability for our customers and a wage and benefit growth trajectory that would help in our cost battle against Airbus and other state sponsored competitors.” but the Union wouldn’t go for it, says McNerney.
Well that clears it up. Boeing would build the plant in Washington as long as there would be no withdrawal of Labor power and wages and benefits were sufficiently low in order to maximize profits and help Boeing win market share from its rivals. They could just as easily have decided to move the production to China or Mexico where the "trajectory" is even more favorable generally, but the US South has a very favorable anti-Union climate and going abroad would be a very unpopular decision given the mood and anti-China sentiment here at home.
The NLRB’s decision will be appealed and I cannot see Boeing not winning the day. There was a similar situation with GM some time ago when Arlington Texas and Ypsilanti Michigan were undercutting each other in order to keep their respective plants open. GM was going to close one of them and was in the drivers seat as these communities competed with each other in order to make their location more profitable for the company. A suit was filed to prevent GM from closing a plant but it was thrown out, capitalists have the right to do what they want with “their” capital. If my memory serves me right, Arlington won but they ended up shutting down that plant also. Workers might be able to force bosses to take actions they are opposed to but we do that through mass action, not the courts.
There are useful conclusions we can draw from the world-view of folks like McNerney. I agree with him when he says that they make decisions based on business principles not emotions or for spite. It is business principles that are anti-worker and anti-Union. What is somewhat depressing as I read the piece is that I know only too well that the Union leadership will not stop the process because they too support competition and the employer's rights. Another stumbling block in the Everett negotiations McNerney writes, was the Union’s demand that Boeing, “remain neutral in all Union organizing campaigns and essentially guarantee to build every future Boeing airplane in the Puget Sound area."
I haven’t read the Union’s side but this sounds like standard stuff from the strategists atop organized Labor. Firstly, it’s a childish fantasy to think that the bosses ever remain neutral. And demanding that jobs not be exported to the South but stay in a particular “unionized” region is no different than the Union leaders response to threats from companies that they will move to China or Mexico; it's a form of protectionism, a disaster. South Carolina has double-digit employment and Boeing is spending more than $1 billion, promising to create 9000 jobs in the “construction phase alone”. This will be popular with workers there. The Union leadership's policies lead them in to the "us or them" trap.
Workers built Unions to protect us from the competition of the marketplace. But the present leadership of organized Labor accepts that we have to compete, that we have to help our individual employers win market share from their rivals so they can keep making profits and we keep our jobs, at least that’s the plan but it doesn’t work. They pit workers in Washington against workers in South Carolina, workers here against workers in China as we join with our bosses in their struggle with their rivals abroad. And as far as state assistance, they all do it. They all try in one way another to protect their home industries against competition, country against country and domestically, state against state; this makes organizing difficult, solidarity between workers almost impossible and strengthens the bosses.
Competition hurts workers as it is a race to the bottom. And it leads to crisis as each nation wants and builds its own aircraft, auto and other industries. This leads to massive overcapacity/overproduction so capacity is cut or plants closed altogether, workers are thrown on to the dole queue and ultimately, recession, slumps and chaos reigns. The shadow of nuclear war is all that prevents the great powers from global conflict over markets and resources; some 50 million workers died in their last world war. We can see the tensions developing as China increases its economic clout. Every capitalist would love to be the only seller among a sea of buyers if they could.
In the US, the failure to organize the South is a major weakness. Organizing the South, uniting all workers around the struggle for jobs and a decent life is the alternative to trying to get the courts to stop capitalists from doing what they want with their capital; they own the courts “We’ve made a rational, legal business decision about the allocation of “our” capital (my added emphasis) and the placement of new work within the U.S.” writes McNerney, “We’re confident the federal courts will reject the claim, but only after a significant and unnecessary expense to taxpayers”.
I wouldn't bet against him. McNerney’s comments are aimed at the public pointing out that those Unions are wasting the taxpayers’ money yet again. Boeing workers, like auto, and the public sector, are among the better paid with some benefits and the bosses are after putting a stop to that and have been very successful so far, with auto and now the public sector. Their efforts at dividing us has have a response that unites.
The Boeing issue also raises the question of capital. Marx pointed out in Capital in the chapter on the working day that in a capitalist economy, the capitalist as a purchaser of human Labor power “upholds his right as a buyer when he tries to make the working day as long as possible, and if possible to make two working days out of one.”
But human Labor power is a unique commodity like no other, not simply because it is the only commodity whose use adds value, but because its specific nature means that the owner of it exercises his or her right when they try to shorten the working day or impose any other limits its use. “Between two equal rights” Marx adds, “force decides”.
It is social force, social power, that is the answer to the present successful offensive of capital.
The capitalists use force all the time. They have a reserve army of unemployed that is a constant threat to those of us working, forcing us to accept wages and other conditions that we would rather not accept. They threaten to move plants unless workers and entire communities agree to subsidize their profits. So though we have rights as sellers of Labor power, the capitalist has a huge advantage in that they are the rightful owners of the means of production and the Labor process as it is through the Labor process that wealth is created. The state, or the government of society is their government representing their class interests, just as the feudal state represented the interests of the aristocracy and the slave state the slave owner.
McNerney is correct when he says that Boeing made a “rational, legal business decision about the allocation of our capital.” Every ruling class imposes their rights through coercion and if necessary violence. Their rights are in direct conflict with workers’ rights. Any rights we have we took through force; we interrupted the flow of capital and the making of profit; terrorism the capitalists described it and will do so again.
The capital they “allocate” is not their product. It is our product, the collective property of those who sell our Labor power, of workers. We would allocate capital completely differently than them. We have no need to compete with other workers for the basic necessities of life. We have no interest in fighting each other to the death over education, housing, medical care, food to eat and fresh water; community against community, nationality against nationality.
Yes we live in a system of production where two equal rights meet each other face to face. What we have to clearly understand is that we have to deny them rights; the right to accumulate wealth we create through our Labor, the right to own the commanding heights of the economy, the right to own and allocate capital and Labor power. For them this is treason, sacrilege, they have the god given right to exploit people and own the productive forces; but history is the history of these struggles and transfers of rights. These capitalists had very limited rights under feudalism until they overthrew it. Here in the US they came to power through the importation of slaves from Africa and indentured servants from Europe; a genocidal war against native people, and a revolution in two parts, one against the British and one against the Southern Slaveocracy.
In Britain they drove the peasantry from the land just like the drove the Irish from theirs and the Yaqui theirs in order to separate them from their means of subsistence; a person that can produce their own food won't be dependent on you. Capitalism needs a worker with no possession other than their ability to work-----for them.
While we are in a struggle to deny them the right to exploit people and destroy the natural world we can guarantee them a secure and productive life-----a job. Something they can’t guarantee Americans or the vast majority of the people on the planet.
* National Labor Relations Board
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