Featured Image Source: Boeing Facebook

First, the union tried to take our jobs, now this . . .

Since Boeing came to the Low Country, we’ve seen a lot of great things happen, and we’ve all felt enormous pride that our neighbors make what is generally considered to be a game-changing airplane, one of the most sophisticated products made by any company anywhere. Charities, schools, and numerous other organizations have benefitted dramatically from Boeing’s corporate philanthropy. Hardly a day goes by that we do not see some worthwhile group or cause get a much-needed shot in the arm from the generosity of Boeing and its employees.

As important as anything, though, Boeing has provided thousands of our friends and neighbors with jobs that pay well and bring with them great benefits. The impact on those families has been dramatic, but the good news hasn’t stopped there. Boeing employees have bought houses and new cars; they’ve gone out to eat, and they’ve shopped at thousands of small businesses in the Charleston area. Simply, the economic impact of Boeing in this region has been explosive and has made our community a better and more prosperous place.

That should make folks happy, huh? Well, apparently not if you are the International Association of Machinists. You remember them, don’t you? That is the union that asked the National Labor Relations Board to stop Boeing from bringing 10,000 jobs to Charleston. They are the people who said South Carolinians were basically too stupid to make airplanes. Yeah, those people.

Well, we weren’t at all surprised to see the union complain about Charleston’s non-union employees getting larger bonuses than the IAM’s Boeing members. That’s right. Boeing’s non-union members got much larger bonuses than the union members, and the union is mad. We wondered how that was possible, so we reached out to a couple of lawyers we know to see why the union employees didn’t do as well. Here’s what we learned in a nutshell.

Unionized employees are under a contract, and the contract spells out what they get. So, when the company does really well and wants to give bigger bonuses to its employees, they can’t if those employees belong to a union. Non-union employees, on the other hand, can get larger bonuses, and that’s exactly what happened.

If you think that’s bad enough for union members, you haven’t heard anything yet. One of our friends told us that if the company even tried to give the union members a larger bonus, the union would immediately file a complaint with the NLRB to stop them, a complaint the union-friendly NLRB would be all too happy to support.

So, the same union that tried to stop Charlestonians from going to work at Boeing now complains when those same folks get larger bonuses than union members. And that same union would file charges against Boeing in front of the NLRB if Boeing tried to give union members more money. With friends like these, who needs enemies.