One way to make Apple CEO Tim Cook uncomfortable is to mention the labor conditions at Foxconn, the tech company’s China-based manufacturer. Ben Field knows that, which is why he broached the subject at a recent Apple shareholders meeting. Read More
It’s not enough for the National Labor Relations Board to decree that Boeing Corporation cannot build a new airliner production facility in South Carolina. Now the NLRB is also claiming the authority to dictate labor policies and order union elections at Catholic universities if they are “not religious enough.” Read More
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka boasted during a February 2011 news conference that he’s “at the White House a couple times a week, two, three times a week.” Trumka added that he also has “conversations every day with someone at the White House or in the administration.” Yesterday we learned conclusively that when the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka speaks, White House officials listen. Read More
It’s a cloudy day in Seattle. On the road leaving the airport, one of Boeing’s plants stretches out next to the highway, just before the cranes of the port.
I am in Seattle to speak to Women of Washington, a nonprofit women’s group focusing on public policy issues, on why America isn’t creating jobs and what to do about it. Read More
"Danaher’s closing,” said Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., lamenting the loss of a plant that had employed 330 people in his state. “Now those jobs are going to Arkansas and to Texas.”
It was April 2005. Neal was taking the opportunity during a House committee hearing on competition with China to complain instead about how Massachusetts was losing jobs to states with less-hostile business climates. Read More
Why has private sector unionization fallen from 35 percent of the work force during World War II to less than 7 percent today? The main reason is that unions raise a firm’s labor costs, leaving fewer resources for things like job creation, capital improvements and research and development. Unions also make it much harder for owners and executives to make practical business decisions. Read More
It’s not every day that the federal government tells a private company where it can, or cannot, build a new factory and hire a thousand new workers.
But that is exactly what the National Labor Relations Board did last month when it filed a complaint against Boeing Aircraft Co. Read More
President Barack Obama asserted last week that it’s time for companies to “step up” and increase hiring. Specifically he said “the issue here is not uncertainty. The issue is they’ve got to start placing their bets on America” and that “it’s time for companies to step up.” Read More
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will be at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce tomorrow morning to join Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-Sc, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-TN, and others to discuss the National Labor Relations Board's attempt to stop Boeing Aircraft Co. from putting more than a thousand of her constituents to work building 787 Dreamliners. Read More
Michael Luttig, Boeing’s executive vice president and general counsel, happens to be a former federal judge who was on the White House short list for a Supreme Court appointment under President George W. Bush, so it’s difficult to dismiss him as merely a self-interested corporate pleader. Read More
