We can't rely on the courts or NLRB as Boeing heads south for cheaper Labor

State lines too

The big business media is putting the pressure on the NLRB regarding its decision that Boeing Corp. violated federal Labor law by building a new plant in South Carolina (see here and here).   The NLRB argues that the move was retaliation for talks breaking down between Boeing and the Machinists Union after the company agreed to build a plant in the Puget Sound area.  The Union refused to agree to a 10 year no strike pledge.

Business Week points out emphatically that workers have the right to strike but companies also have the right to "make strategic plans to avoid work stoppages". * These strategic plans have taken various forms over the years, imprisonment, the use of hired thugs or the military, and of course, moving to cheaper locals like South Carolina or China where Unions are non existent or simply company Unions or those approved by the state.

Boeing management are not stupid and like all representatives of the capitalist class, are more vociferous in the defense of their interests than workers' leaders are of ours. It is quite likely that introducing a demand like 10-year no strike clause was a tactic as its a demand even today's management friendly Labor officials could not accept----the pressure from below would be too great.  While the lifestyles of the Labor hierarchy are more akin to the bosses, their social base is still the Unions and their members.  This is why the attacks on bargaining rights and dues check off were the only issues in the recent Wisconsin events

So Boeing got $170 million in grants and "tens of millions more" from the taxpayers of South Carolina writes BW and decided to build the plant in South Carolina. But this journal of capitalism is correct that although the move "signals a future of declining wages" much like in auto and the rest of US manufacturing and that the "Employer's quest for low-cost labor has been devastating to American workers." Their "efforts to boost their competitiveness doesn't necessarily make those efforts illegal." (my added emphasis)
This scenario has been played out time and time again as the strategy of the Labor hierarchy has been to rely on the courts and the Democrats to look after our interests.   Unions weren't built through the courts.  Unions weren't built by lawyers either.  They arose out of heroic struggle and sacrifice and against the opposition of the most brutal capitalist class in the world.  In a capitalist economic system the owners of capital have rights. They have the right to own the factory and the right to move it, or to employ their capital in sectors of the economy that brings them the best returns, that enhances capital accumulation. We have to take these rights away from them if we want to be free.

Capitalists have the right to purchase Labor power, the use of a human being.  And as workers, we have the right to sell our Labor power to capitalists. the struggle over the conditions under which this Labor power is used and the price of it is the class struggle.  As Marx explained, when two forces with equal rights meet, then force decides. 

Having a whole section of the country where workers' organization is weak, and Labor power cheaper will always give the boss an edge; they will always seek the least expensive place to do business. The bosses haven't moved production to China in order to raise the wages of Chinese workers. In fact, Chinese workers have made considerable wage gains through strikes (in a dictatorship no less) which has led some manufacturers to move production yet again to Vietnam.

The way to negate this advantage the employers have is not to compete with workers in other states or other countries but to join with them in a global struggle against what are global employers.  This is why the xenophobic war against undocumented immigrants is such a pointless exercise.  As long as there is cheaper Labor, capital will flow toward it.  There are no borders for capital.  Freedom for the capitalist is the right to buy and sell Labor power and they will defend that right to the death.

Wages, conditions and unionization is weaker in the South in large part because of its racist history.  Racism has not only had brutal consequences for its victims and still does, it is very useful in that it divides workers and makes unity more difficult.  It is a terrible failure of the Labor movement to have not organized the South.  Rather than waste resources and billions of dollars of workers' money electing Democrats every four years, these resources should have been spent organizing the unorganized, especially the South.

By uniting with all workers, whether in the southern states of the US, in Mexico or China and raising wages for all, we will eliminate the ability of the bosses to use us against one another

Global unionism to fight global capitalism.  This is the answer to competition that only drags us all down.

* Business Week 6-12-2011