It must be recognized that no Monopoly or Cartel, Labor or Corporate, can stand without Government duplicity, protection, and enforcement of competitive restraints from free market interference....CV
November 10th 2011
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D) is from Maryland. He doesn’t like the fact that Lindsay Graham (R) from South Carolina is fighting the union appointees at the National Labor Relations Board and their attempt to shut down Boeing’s new 787 assembly line in Graham’s own state.
As a result, Cummings is accusing Boeing of unduly influencing Graham and is demanding that Congress step aside for the NLRB.
In a letter Wednesday to Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Cummings said new documents released by the labor board show the agency came under undue pressure from Boeing and lawmakers before it filed its controversial complaint against the aerospace giant this year.
Consequently, the NLRB’s “ongoing legal proceeding should be allowed to take its full course without any further interference from members of Congress,” according to Cummings, the committee’s ranking member.
“These new documents, which the committee has now obtained, raise troubling new questions about whether Boeing inappropriately sought to use its political influence in Congress to prevent the NLRB from filing its enforcement action against the company,” Cummings wrote.
The documents in question are notes taken by Lafe Solomon, the NLRB’s acting general counsel, and other agency lawyers describing phone calls from Boeing’s attorneys and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) before the NLRB issued its complaint against the company on April 20. Graham told Solomon he would go after the agency “full guns a-blazing” if the NLRB issued its complaint against Boeing for allegedly retaliating against union workers, according to Solomon’s notes. [be it known that SC Senator Lindsay Graham is not regarded liberty's savior in his own state of SC. He's a True Blood neocon corporatist by any measure...CV]So, Rep. Elijah Cummins from Maryland believes a lawmaker from South Carolina should shut up when a union-controlled agency is about to threaten up to 5,000 South Carolina jobs?
Um, Rep. Cummings…Since it’s not Maryland jobs that are at stake here, who’s influencing you?…
[via OpenSecrets.org]
source: LaborUnionReport