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Union Workers Cry Foul Over New S.C. Boeing Plant

Construction crews work to finish Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner assembly  plant in North Charleston, S.C. The company plans to hire 1,000 nonunion workers and start assembling planes in July.
Boeing
Construction crews work to finish Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner assembly plant in North Charleston, S.C. The company plans to hire 1,000 nonunion workers and start assembling planes in July.

A new Boeing plant in South Carolina is the subject of a legal battle that's playing out across the South and in Congress.

The controversy is over Boeing's decision to assemble its fuel-efficient 787 Dreamliner in nonunion South Carolina instead of in Washington state, where it has built planes for decades.

The company says South Carolina offered a lot of incentives to get the plant, but the union says Boeing broke the law and violated workers' rights.

Plant Timeline Not Affected

Boeing's enormous assembly plant near the airport in North Charleston is almost finished. Inside, workers are installing equipment where new employees will build the Dreamliner.

Candy Eslinger, a spokeswoman for Boeing in South Carolina, says she can't talk specifically about the union complaint. But she says it hasn't changed anything at the plant.

"Our plans are still going forward," Eslinger says. "We will be starting production here in July of 2011 and we'll deliver our first airplane out of South Carolina in 2012."

The long-term plan is to produce three planes a month in South Carolina and seven in Washington state. Boeing spokesman Tim Neale says the company negotiated with the union, but failed.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey  Graham (from left), Gov. Nikki Haley and state House Speaker Bobby Harrell listen to Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley Jr. criticize a National Labor Relations Board complaint against Boeing in North Charleston, S.C., on April 21.
Bruce Smith / AP
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AP
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (from left), Gov. Nikki Haley and state House Speaker Bobby Harrell listen to Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley Jr. criticize a National Labor Relations Board complaint against Boeing in North Charleston, S.C., on April 21.

"We were looking to make a new investment and new production capacity," Neale says. "Our current contract acknowledges our right to locate work elsewhere and that's what we chose to do in this case, because we just couldn't get the terms from them that we needed."

Retaliation Move?

But the machinists union says it's not that simple. The union says Boeing built the plant in nonunion South Carolina to retaliate against Washington workers for previous strikes, and it says doing so is a violation of federal labor law. The machinists turned to the National Labor Relations Board, which investigates labor disputes.

In April, the top lawyer for the NLRB issued a formal complaint against Boeing. Soon after, the issue erupted in the nation's capital. Republican leaders introduced federal legislation and began a campaign against the machinists union. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham was one of them.

[I]n America, you don't settle judicial law enforcement cases in politics. You settle them in the courts and that's what Boeing should be doing here.

"Nobody's pay was cut. Nobody's benefits were reduced because they moved to South Carolina, so this complaint is just frivolous," Graham said in a Senate floor speech.

The NLRB says all of Boeing's work on the Dreamliner should be done in Washington state. But Graham and others say no one should be able to tell a company where it can do business.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, criticized the union's complaint. "It really is very offensive," she said on Fox News. "It's an assault on everything that we know to be American and they have to stop this."

But David Campbell, an attorney representing the union, says standing up for workers is anything but un-American.

"In America, people have collective bargaining rights and in America, you don't settle judicial law enforcement cases in politics. You settle them in the courts and that's what Boeing should be doing here," Campbell says.

'It's About Being Fair And Honest'

In North Charleston — where the Boeing plant is providing more than 1,000 nonunion jobs — some residents at a local discount store say they're not sure what to think.

"We need the work here too in Charleston but it's about being fair and being honest," says Anthony Manuel, a member of the longshoremen's union. "If you did them wrong how we feel if you gonna do us wrong here in Charleston too."

But Brandy Hall says the jobs will really help Charleston, which struggled after the naval base was closed in 1996. She's not sure the union should complain.

"They're not entirely moving the plant so they still do have an economy up there based around that and it's just that I'm not sure I see where the issue is, to tell you the truth," she says.

There's a hearing in Seattle on June 14 about the legal issues, but it's not likely to resolve the matter. Boeing officials say if they lose, they'll appeal to the federal courts, where the case could remain for years.

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Whether covering the manhunt and eventual capture of Eric Robert Rudolph in the mountains of North Carolina, the remnants of the Oklahoma City federal building with its twisted metal frame and shattered glass, flood-ravaged Midwestern communities, or the terrorist bombings across the country, including the blast that exploded in Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta, correspondent Kathy Lohr has been at the heart of stories all across the nation.
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