A strong presence by labor in the halls of Congress made all the difference in the fight to defeat an amendment that would have eliminated a key enforcement remedy available to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The amendment, introduced in the Senate Appropriations Committee by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, would strip the NLRB of its authority to order jobs returned if they have been relocated out of retaliation for lawful union activity. The amendment was designed specifically to aid The Boeing Company but was written in a way that would give American companies a free pass to discriminate and then move work overseas.
Graham’s unsuccessful bid to eliminate the board’s enforcement ability follows last week’s party line vote in the House to approve the “Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act,” a Republican-backed bill that would prevent the NLRB from ordering an employer to return work that was illegally transferred.