After failed union vote, Boeing hails Trump visit to plant
Boeing workers’ overwhelming anti-union vote at the aviation giant’s 787 Dreamliner plant in South Carolina is a big victory for Southern politicians and business leaders who have lured manufacturing jobs to the region on the promise of keeping unions out.
It’s also a win for the company that will host President Donald Trump at its North Charleston facilities Friday.
Nearly 3,000 workers were eligible to vote Wednesday on representation by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace workers. According to Boeing, nearly 74 percent of the more than 2,800 votes cast were against representation.
It was a massive victory for union opponents, in line with long-standing Southern aversion to collective
We’ll make the unions understand full well that they are not needed, not wanted and not welcome in the state of South Carolina.” Nikki Haley, former South Carolina Gov.
bargaining. At 1.6 percent, South Carolina maintains the lowest percentage of unionized workers in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Its neighboring states, North Carolina and Georgia, hover slightly higher but still in low territory, at 3.0 and 3.9 percent, respectively.
Other large-scale Southern unionization efforts haven’t met recent success. In 2014, Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, turned down representation by the United Auto Workers. For years, organizers have campaigned for representation among Nissan workers in Canton, Mississippi, but no vote has been scheduled.
Boeing came to South Carolina in part because of the state’s minuscule union presence.
Southern culture
“I think a failed vote isn’t that big of a deal because that’s frankly the norm in the South,” said Jeffrey Hirsch, law professor who specializes in labor relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The culture here, at least in recent memory, has not been pro-union.”
Had the results at Boeing been reversed, Hirsch says, the ripple effect could have been dramatic. Politicians such as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley — who, directly and via her labor secretary Catherine Templeton, adamantly spoke against the need for unions here — would be forced to rethink business recruitment strategies, and corporations also might think more carefully about locating in South Carolina.
“We’ll make the unions understand full well that they are not needed, not wanted and not welcome in the state of South Carolina,” Haley said in a 2012 address. She has since been appointed ambassador to the United Nations by Trump.
Trump’s trip
Boeing’s massive win gives the company a boost for Friday’s visit from Trump, who blasted the manufacturer during last year’s presidential campaign for the cost of building a new Air Force One.
“Costs are out of control,” Trump tweeted in early December. “Cancel order!” Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg met with Trump two weeks later.
Trump’s visit will also be his first since naming law school dean R. Alexander Acosta as his pick to lead the U.S. Department of Labor, following the withdrawal of troubled nominee Andrew Puzder. Acosta has served on the National Labor Relations Board and as a federal prosecutor in Florida and was an assistant attorney general for civil rights under President George W. Bush.
In a statement on the union election, Boeing vice president and general manager Joan Robinson Berry looked past the decisive vote to Trump’s visit.
“It is great to have this vote behind us as we come together to celebrate that event,” she said.