The South Holds: Big Union Loss At Boeing In South Carolina

The machinist’s union had high hopes for a victory, but they hit a wall at the South Carolina Boeing plant. The company’s anti-union campaign was augmented by the efforts of a South Carolina manufacturers trade group  (Boeing is a member) that ran “hard-edge ads opposing the union organizing effort, including one depicting the machinists as a casino boss who wanted workers to gamble away their future.” says an article on in the New York Times. According to Boeing, 74 percent of workers at the South Carolina plant, which manufactures  the company’s Dreamliner aircraft, voted to reject the unionization bid by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The vote will be widely viewed “as an early test of labor’s strength in the Trump era” and follows a string of union defeats in the South, says the Times. Meanwhile, after the withdrawal of President Trump’s first choice for Secretary of Labor, fast-food mogul Andrew Puzder, Trump immediately nominated R. Alexander Acosta, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board and currently a law school dean. “Though Acosta signed hundreds of opinions at the NLRB, some of which are sure to draw scrutiny from progressives, those familiar with his work describe him as a careful and cautious public servant whose career trajectory suggested he may someday vie for a federal judgeship,” according to a Reuters article, which notes that Acosta is Trump’s first Hispanic nominee and is likely to be confirmed, given that he has already gone through multiple Senate vettings.