- The Boeing NLRB Hearing

I’m sure you’re all a twitter wondering where I come down on this issue. A union tries to use the force of government to punish a corporation because they opened a factory in a place that doesn’t comply with what is in the union’s best interest. Where oh where will those free-marketeers be on something like this?

I’ve been following it for months now – but I didn’t have anything really new to add so I shut up about it. The downside of a union victory here is obvious (or I suppose it could be the ‘upside’ if you’re a Guatemalan aircraft engineer). So there isn’t much point in me rehashing it. I really think this is the last gasp of a movement that knows it’s as good as dead.

But something occurred to me today after reading this laughable WSJ opinion piece. Think about it this way:

You are a union electrician – member in good standing of the IBEW. For the sake of easy math, let’s say you make $1000 per day (which would actually make you a supervisor I think – but whatever.) Including sales taxes, property taxes, and all other taxes, you pay a cumulative 50% of your pay to others, and another 9% in union dues. You decide that you’ve had enough of the traffic, the rudeness, and the snow – so you decide to move to South Carolina.

In South Carolina let’s say you make $750 per day – a massive cut in total compensation. But instead of paying 50% in cumulative taxes, thanks to those illiterate small government rednecks, you’re only paying 25% to others, which leaves you with $562 vs the $410 you get to keep in NJ. And you don’t have to give the union anything. You can easily save $50 of the difference to more than make up for the employer portion of the pension that you won’t be getting. And since the cost of living is so much lower, you’re actually better off in a ‘right to work’ state without a union, than you are in a ‘command and control’ state with one.

The point is, for the members, in the end it really doesn’t matter that the unions have the government fully bought and paid for. They introduce so much inefficiency that each member’s personal share of it can’t possibly make up for what the government and the union do to help them. Yes they get a better wage in the mandatory unionization state, but everything works so poorly thanks to the unions that the government takes it all back from you in the end.

So this outward migration to the south that we see in NJ could be described as the union membership shedding its skin like a snake. The bloated wasteful government and the union that owns it, are both left behind while the membership that used to populate it moves on. In the meantime the folks that are left in New Jersey can go on giving away union jobs to the their brothers in law to work in the chief compliance office of the department of regulatory compliance bureau, and inspecting each other’s inspection processes. You know – adding value the 'government' union way.

This NLRB meeting will come to nothing. If thanks to corruption the union does pull out a surprise, then Boeing will rightly move to Guatemala. Unless you make your living supporting the principle of labor unions, you already know this. And if you do make your living that way, then there are a whole bunch of things you don’t understand, and this should be way down on the list of things you should learn about.

This is really only news because of the union's brazen-ness at setting it's NLRB attack dog at Boeing. But corrupt as it is, I still trust our system to not commit economic suicide by supporting the union’s position.