my unsolicited side effects...

Doug Ross @ Journal blogged on 11/02/11 that while the NLRB came down hard on Boeing‘s new 787 Dreamliner assembly plant in South Carolina, a Right-to-Work state, to date they’ve been completely silent on General Electric’s new jet engine parts manufacturing facility in Auburn, Alabama, another Right-to-Work state. He chalks it up to coincidence that GE’s CEO, Mr. Jeffry Immelt, also happens to be the person President Obama’s hand-picked to head his Jobs Council to put America back to work.

“Coincidence”? I suggest it’s probably a NLRB myopic view of protecting labor at all costs – even if it means laborers eventually lose out to outsourcing, offshoring, or the cancellation of jobs creation plans altogether. A quick Google search reveals that, between 01/01/09 and 10/14/11, General Electric announced the creation of 10,000 jobs in the United States involving eight different industries across seventeen states (click  for their impressive graphic):

Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Kentucky, Colorado, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Hold on a second: Aren’t those last eight states “Right-to-Work” states? Yep, they sure are, and, collectively, they account for 2,505 of GE’s announced new jobs in the US. I emphatically applaud General Electric’s plans to create 10,000 jobs – we sure need them – but it’s just a sneeze in a hurricane compared to the over 340,000 new jobs per month we’re going to need for President Obama to make good on his repeated promise “… not [to] rest until everyone has a job, a good wage and benefits.”

Now, unlike the NLRB singling out Boeing, I’m not singling out GE: Have you read or heard of the NLRB complaining against other aerospace firms like Brasil’s Embraer Executive Aircraft in Melbourne, FL, Japan’s Honda Aircraft Co. in Greensboro, NC; or Piper Aircraft Inc. of Vero Beach, FL – aerospace firms with recently new plants located in Right-to-Work states and employing non-Union labor? Neither have I.

(BTW: Having worked in the gas turbine industry for almost two decades, I’d love to work for GE… in fact, Ms/Mr. GE HR Person, if you’d like to help Mr. Immelt’s achieve his goal to impress Mr. Obama, perhaps you’d like to check out my credentials. And, if possible, I prefer to work at a job located above the Mason-Dixon Line…maybe Virginia or Metro DC area if the fit is right. Thanks in advance!)

In my humble opinion, the NLRB well-publicized attacks on  Boeing’s new South Carolina plant – the largest single corporate investment ever in the state’s history, and one designed to operate as a 100% renewable energy site to boot  – while remaining totally silent on other aerospace firms with similar activities, appears to be far more than simply “coincidence”.

Update: “far more” appears to be a serious understatement.

Thanks for reading!