President Obama’s pick to lead the Commerce Department, John Bryson, got caught in a political crossfire over a lawsuit between the National Labor Relations Board and his employer, Boeing, at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday. He chose to side with Boeing, where he holds a seat on the board.
The NLRB has filed a complaint against Boeing alleging that the company is building an assembly line in South Carolina as retaliation against its unionized Washington State workers. A large number of Republican lawmakers, especially in South Carolina, have waged all-out war over the decision and are even threatening to cut off the agency’s funding in response.
At the hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison whether the NLRB decision was “regulatory excess,” prompting Bryson to defend the corporation.
“I think it’s not the right judgment,” he said. “Maybe if I’m … I wasn’t thinking of it so much as regulation, it seemed like such an unexpected kind of legal proceeding that none of us on the board - we thought we were doing the right thing for the country and we looked hard at maintaining the jobs in Washington and expanding the jobs elsewhere for the benefit of the country and never thought for example of putting those jobs outside the U.S.”
The NLRB is an independent agency and its lawsuit was not filed in consultation with the Obama administration, so Bryson’s words don’t contradict the White House. But Republicans, led by South Carolina Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, have been waging all-out war on the issue and will doubtless jump on the exchange. Already the RNC is out with video:
Senator Graham’s dispute with labor in the Boeing case took a turn for the ugly this month as the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, whose union is at the center of the case, filed an ethics complaint against him for interfering with the NLRB’s independence. A number of Democratic lawmakers have accused Graham of going too far in his attacks on similar grounds.
“It’s clear what this union complaint is about — it’s an effort to intimidate people like me who are speaking out against them,” Graham responded in a statement on Tuesday. “I will not be intimidated. And it’s not going to stop me from fighting for the people of South Carolina.”
Graham isn’t the first South Carolina lawmaker to draw the Machinists’ ire: they also filed a suit against Governor Nikki Haley this year claiming that her anti-union rhetoric made it impossible for her appointees to deal with labor issues fairly.
Benjy Sarlin
Benjy Sarlin is a reporter for Talking Points Memo and co-writes the campaign blog, TPM2012. He previously reported for The Daily Beast/Newsweek as their Washington Correspondent and covered local politics for the New York Sun.
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