[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 65 (Thursday, May 12, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2933-S2936]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. ALEXANDER (for himself, Mr. Graham, Mr. DeMint,

[[Page S2934]]

        Mr. Paul, Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Lugar, Mr. Shelby, Mr. Isakson, Mr. 
        Risch, Mr. Boozman, Mr. Lee, Mr. Kyl, Mr. Vitter, Mr. Cochran, 
        Mr. Coburn, Mr. Grassley, Mrs. Hutchison, Mr. Hoeven, Mr. 
        Johanns, Mr. Johnson of Wisconsin, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Barrasso, 
        Mr. Burr, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Sessions, Mr. Hatch, Mr. Enzi, Mr. 
        Chambliss, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Heller, Mr. McCain, Mr. Wicker, Mr. 
        Rubio, and Mr. Corker):
  S. 964. A bill to amend the National Labor Relations Act to clarify 
the applicability of such Act with respect to States that have right to 
work laws in effect; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and 
Pensions.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have come to the Senate floor today 
to introduce, on behalf of 34 Senators, the Job Protection Act.
  The Job Protection Act is occasioned by a decision by the acting 
general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board that filed a 
complaint to stop the Boeing Company from building airplanes at a 
nonunion plant in South Carolina, suggesting that a unionized American 
company cannot expand its operations in 1 of 22 States with a right-to-
work law.
  The right-to-work law protects workers' rights to join or not join a 
union. For example, in Tennessee we are a right-to-work State. In the 
case of a Saturn employee, where United Auto Workers is the bargaining 
agent, a worker doesn't have to join the union or pay dues, but he has 
to accept the UAW as his bargaining agent.
  At the Nissan plant a few miles away from the General Motors plant, 
workers have three times elected not to have a union as their 
bargaining agent. That is what a right-to-work State is. There are 22 
of them. The State of New Hampshire is in the process of deciding 
whether to become the 23rd. Their legislature is of one view, and their 
Governor is of the other view.
  The Job Protection Act, which I introduce today on behalf of 34 
Senators, would preserve the Federal law's current protection of State 
right-to-work laws in the National Labor Relations Act and provide 
necessary clarity to prevent the NLRB from moving forward in their case 
against Boeing or attempting a similar strategy against other 
companies.
  Specifically, the Job Protection Act would, first, explicitly clarify 
that the board cannot order an employer to relocate jobs from one 
location to another; two, it guarantees an employer the right to decide 
where to do business within the United States; and, three, it protects 
an employer's free speech regarding the costs associated with having a 
unionized workforce without fear of such communication being used as 
evidence in an anti-union discrimination suit.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the names of the 34 Senators who are original cosponsors of the Job 
Protection Act.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   Job Protection Act--Cosponsor List

       Lamar Alexander, Lindsey Graham, Jim DeMint, Rand Paul, 
     John Cornyn, Richard Lugar, Richard Shelby, Johnny Isakson, 
     James Risch, John Boozman, Mike Lee, Jon Kyl, David Vitter, 
     Thad Cochran, Tom Coburn, Chuck Grassley, Kay Bailey 
     Hutchison.
       John Hoeven, Mike Johanns, Ron Johnson, Mitch McConnell, 
     John Barrasso, Richard Burr, Pat Roberts, Jeff Sessions, 
     Orrin Hatch, Mike Enzi, Saxby Chambliss, Jim Inhofe, Dean 
     Heller, John McCain, Roger Wicker, Marco Rubio, Bob Corker.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed 
in the Record at the end of my remarks two articles by the Wall Street 
Journal, the first written by me on April 29 and the second written by 
the president of the Boeing Company, Jim McNerney, who is also chairman 
of President Obama's Export Council.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, now to make a few remarks about the 
actions that have caused this.
  I just left a hearing in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 
Committee on the middle class. One of the witnesses was the general 
counsel of the Boeing Company. As might be expected, given the 
notoriety of this case and the breathtaking scope of it, he got a lot 
of questions.
  Let me first say why there is such a breathtaking scope here. Up 
until the filing of the complaint, one would assume that a 
manufacturing company, such as Boeing or a smaller company that wanted 
to open a new plant to create new jobs could make its own decision 
about where to do that. Then in doing so, it could take into account 
such factors as the cost of labor. It could take into account such 
factors as the labor relations within a State, as well as the 
geographical location of the State and many other factors.
  The reason the decision by the acting general counsel has attracted 
so much attention is it basically says--or at least it suggests--to any 
company manufacturing a product in a State which is not a right-to-work 
State, such as Washington, that you better think twice before you open 
a new production line in one of the right-to-work States.
  Let me talk for a moment about why that has an impact on the middle 
class in America. Thirty years ago I was Governor of Tennessee. We were 
the third poorest State. My goal was to raise family incomes and to 
create an environment in which they could be raised. I was a young 
Governor, but I knew enough to know the government did not raise the 
incomes but it might create a good environment for that to happen.
  I went to my first White House dinner with the President of the 
United States. The President was then Jimmy Carter. The President said 
to us Governors at a very nice dinner--just the Governors and their 
spouses and the President and Mrs. Carter: Governors, go to Japan. 
Persuade them to make in the United States what they sell in the United 
States. I remember I called Dean Rusk, who had been Secretary of State, 
and asked him to visit with me. I talked to him about how to do this.
  Off I went to Japan, which is not something I planned to do when I 
was walking across Tennessee trying to be the Governor. I met with the 
Nissan officials in Tokyo in the fall of 1979. At that time, Japanese 
companies seemed so powerful that there were books coming out saying 
they might take over the United States economy, but they were not 
making here what they sold here. They were making Nissan cars and 
trucks in Japan. They were making a decision about where to locate in 
our country. I took with me a photograph of the United States at night 
taken from a satellite. They asked: Where is Tennessee? I said: It is 
right in the middle of the lights. That reduced the shipping and 
transportation costs. Then the next decision was: Where in the center 
did they want to go? Every State north of us did not have a right-to-
work law. Tennessee and the States around us did. Nissan chose 
Tennessee, and they and the General Motors plant that later came and 
the Volkswagen plant and thousands of suppliers have helped our middle 
class raise incomes over the last 30 years. A third of our jobs are 
auto manufacturing jobs because we provided an environment in which 
automakers can compete in the world marketplace.
  Nissan said today that soon they will be making in the United States 
85 percent of what they sell in the United States, which makes them a 
very American company. That is what we want. But this decision says we 
throw a big wet blanket over all the auto suppliers and manufacturers 
who might be thinking about moving into Tennessee or opening new plants 
in Tennessee or suppliers who might be wishing to follow Boeing to 
South Carolina because it says you cannot make that decision.
  We have never had that kind of law in the United States. We have had 
a right-to-work law on the books since 1947. States have a right to 
adopt it or not to adopt it. The legislation I am offering today on 
behalf of 34 Senators does not change that, but it does preserve the 
right of States to adopt a right-to-work law, the right of employees to 
join or not to join a union, and the right of employers to make 
decisions about where to locate their plants and their ability to speak 
in public about what they are doing.
  This is a most consequential decision. It is one that deserves the 
attention of every Senator because as the Boeing chairman, who is the 
head of President Obama's Export Council,

[[Page S2935]]

wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week, a union State would not be 
able to attract a manufacturer because a manufacturer might be afraid 
that any expansion could never be done in a right-to-work State. By 
simple mathematics, if Boeing, which is our largest exporter--155,000 
employees in the United States, another 15,000 around the world--has a 
disincentive or if it cannot expand a new production line in a right-
to-work State and if it might think twice about expanding in any other 
State, then where is it going to go? It is going to go to some other 
country.
  This decision by the acting general counsel of the National Labor 
Relations Board is the single most important action I have seen in 
years that would rush American jobs overseas in pursuit of an 
environment in which they can build and manufacture competitively. It 
is just the reverse of what President Carter said to the Governors 30 
years ago when he said: Governors, go to Japan. Persuade them to make 
here what they sell here.
  We did that. They came here. They are making 85 percent of what they 
sell here. We want Volkswagen to do that. We want General Motors to do 
that. We want Ford to do that. We want Boeing to do that. And if we say 
to them, But we are going to tell you, the Federal Government is going 
to tell you where you have to locate your plants, you are going to 
override section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act which was passed in 1947 
and which has created an environment which has permitted American 
manufacturing to succeed.
  All one has to do is read David Halberstam's book ``The Reckoning'' 
in the late 1980s to see that if our entire auto industry were still 
locked in Detroit, it would not be as competitive as it is today--cars 
made in America. I know that firsthand because I saw it happen when 
Nissan came to Tennessee. They did not hire a bunch of people from 
Japan to run the plant. They went to Detroit. They got Ford executives 
who knew how to run a plant but were not allowed to by the environment 
there, and they put them at a start-from-scratch place and created the 
most efficient automobile plant in North America.
  We welcome also the General Motors plant and the United Auto Workers 
to their Spring Hill location in Tennessee. That is what a right-to-
work State is where you can choose to join a union or not to join a 
union. Both can operate. Employees make the decision.
  But when the Federal Government starts telling any company--a Boeing 
or a Boeing supplier, an auto company or an auto supplier or any 
manufacturing company--you cannot locate in a right-to-work State, they 
probably will not locate in a non-right-to-work State. Where are they 
likely to go? Mexico, Europe, Japan. Boeing sells airplanes all around 
the world. It can make airplanes all around the world. If we persist in 
policies such as this, instead of having a situation where our largest 
exporter has 170,000 employees, more than 150,000 of which are in the 
United States, we will turn that right upside down and they will be 
making 85 percent of their airplanes in the countries where they sell 
them, and the United States will have a lot fewer jobs.
  This is a consequential matter that I hope attracts Democratic as 
well as Republican support. It preserves the right-to-work law. It 
preserves the choices of employees. It preserves the decision of 
corporations to make their own decisions about where to locate. It 
would stop a Federal Government regulation which is the single most 
effective action I know about to chase American jobs overseas and lower 
family incomes.

                               Exhibit 1

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Apr. 29, 2011]

              The White House vs. Boeing: A Tennessee Tale

                          (By Lamar Alexander)

       The National Labor Relations Board has moved to stop Boeing 
     from building airplanes at a nonunion plant in South 
     Carolina, suggesting that a unionized American company cannot 
     expand its operations into one of the 22 states with right-
     to-work laws, which protect a worker's right to join or not 
     join a union. (New Hampshire's legislature has just approved 
     its becoming the 23rd.)
       This reminds me of a White House state dinner in February 
     1979, when I was governor of Tennessee. President Jimmy 
     Carter said, ``Governors, go to Japan. Persuade them to make 
     here what they sell here.''
       ``Make here what they sell here'' was then the union battle 
     cry, part of an effort to slow the tide of Japanese cars and 
     trucks entering the U.S. market.
       Off I flew to Tokyo to meet with Nissan executives who were 
     deciding where to put their first U.S. manufacturing plant. I 
     carried with me a photograph taken at night from a satellite 
     showing the country at night with all its lights on.
       ``Where is Tennessee?'' the executives asked. ``Right in 
     the middle of the lights,'' I answered, pointing out that 
     locating a plant in the population center reduces the cost of 
     transporting cars to customers. That center had migrated 
     south from the Midwest, where most U.S. auto plants were, to 
     Kentucky and Tennessee.
       Then the Japanese examined a second consideration: 
     Tennessee has a right-to-work law and Kentucky does not. This 
     meant that in Kentucky workers would have to join the United 
     Auto Workers union. Workers in Tennessee had a choice.
       In 1980 Nissan chose Tennessee, a state with almost no auto 
     jobs. Today auto assembly plants and suppliers provide one-
     third of our state's manufacturing jobs. Tennessee is the 
     home for production of the Leaf, Nissan's all-electric 
     vehicle, and the batteries that power it. Recently Nissan 
     announced that 85% of the cars and trucks it sells in the 
     U.S. will be made in the U.S.--making it one of the largest 
     ``American'' auto companies and nearly fulfilling Mr. 
     Carter's request of 30 years ago.
       But now unions want to make it illegal for a company that 
     has experienced repeated strikes to move production to a 
     state with a right-to-work law. What would this mean for the 
     future of American auto jobs? Jobs would flee overseas as 
     manufacturers look for a competitive environment in which to 
     make and sell cars around the world.
       It's happened before. David Halberstam's 1986 book, ``The 
     Reckoning''--about the decline of the domestic American auto 
     industry--tells the story. Halberstam quotes American Motors 
     President George Romney, who criticized the ``shared 
     monopoly'' consisting of the Big Three Detroit auto 
     manufacturers and the UAW. ``There is nothing more vulnerable 
     than entrenched success,'' Romney warned. Detroit ignored 
     upstarts like Nissan who in the 1960s began selling funny 
     little cars to American consumers. We all know what happened 
     to employment in the Big Three companies.
       Even when Detroit sought greener pastures in a right-to-
     work state, its ``partnership'' with the United Auto Workers 
     could not compete. In 1985, General Motors located its $5 
     billion Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., 40 miles from 
     Nissan, hoping side-by-side competition would help the 
     Americans beat the Japanese. After 25 years, nonunion Nissan 
     operated the most efficient auto plant in North America. The 
     Saturn/UAW partnership never made a profit. GM closed Saturn 
     last year.
       Nissan's success is one reason why Volkswagen recently 
     located in Chattanooga, and why Honda, Toyota, BMW, Kia, 
     Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and thousands of suppliers have chosen 
     southeastern right-to-work states for their plants. Under 
     right-to-work laws, employees may join unions, but mostly 
     they have declined. Three times workers at the Nissan plant 
     in Smyrna, Tenn., rejected organizing themselves like Saturn 
     employees a few miles away.
       Our goal should be to make it easier and cheaper to create 
     private-sector jobs in this country. Giving workers the right 
     to join or not to join a union helps to create a competitive 
     environment in which more manufacturers like Nissan can make 
     here 85% of what they sell here.
                                  ____


              [From the Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2011]

                  Boeing Is Pro-Growth, Not Anti-Union

                           (By Jim McNerney)

       Deep into the recent recession, Boeing decided to invest 
     more than $1 billion in a new factory in South Carolina. 
     Surging global demand for our innovative, new 787 Dreamliner 
     exceeded what we could build on one production line and we 
     needed to open another.
       This was good news for Boeing and for the economy. The new 
     jetliner assembly plant would be the first one built in the 
     U.S. in 40 years. It would create new American jobs at a time 
     when most employers are hunkered down. It would expand the 
     domestic footprint of the nation's leading exporter and make 
     it more competitive against emerging plane makers from China, 
     Russia and elsewhere. And it would bring hope to a state 
     burdened by double-digit unemployment--with the construction 
     phase alone estimated to create more than 9,000 total jobs.
       Eighteen months later, a North Charleston swamp has been 
     transformed into a state-of-the-art, green-energy powered, 
     1.2 million square-foot airplane assembly plant. One thousand 
     new workers are hired and being trained to start building 
     planes in July.
       It is an American industrial success story by every 
     measure. With 9% unemployment nationwide, we need more of 
     them--and soon.
       Yet the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) believes it 
     was a mistake and that our actions were unlawful. It claims 
     we improperly transferred existing work, and that our 
     decision reflected ``animus'' and constituted ``retaliation'' 
     against union-represented employees in Washington state. Its 
     remedy: Reverse course, Boeing, and build the assembly line 
     where we tell you to build it.

[[Page S2936]]

       The NLRB is wrong and has far overreached its authority. 
     Its action is a fundamental assault on the capitalist 
     principles that have sustained America's competitiveness 
     since it became the world's largest economy nearly 140 years 
     ago. We've made a rational, legal business decision about the 
     allocation of our capital and the placement of new work 
     within the U.S. We're confident the federal courts will 
     reject the claim, but only after a significant and 
     unnecessary expense to taxpayers.
       More worrisome, though, are the potential implications of 
     such brazen regulatory activism on the U.S. manufacturing 
     base and long-term job creation. The NLRB's overreach could 
     accelerate the overseas flight of good, middle-class American 
     jobs.
       Contrary to the NLRB's claim, our decision to expand in 
     South Carolina resulted from an objective analysis of the 
     same factors we use in every site selection. We considered 
     locations in several states but narrowed the choice to either 
     North Charleston (where sections of the 787 are built 
     already) or Everett, Wash., which won the initial 787 
     assembly line in 2003.
       Our union contracts expressly permit us to locate new work 
     at our discretion. However, we viewed Everett as an 
     attractive option and engaged voluntarily in talks with union 
     officials to see if we could make the business case work. 
     Among the considerations we sought were a long-term ``no-
     strike clause'' that would ensure production stability for 
     our customers, and a wage and benefit growth trajectory that 
     would help in our cost battle against Airbus and other state-
     sponsored competitors.
       Despite months of effort, no agreement was reached. Union 
     leaders couldn't meet expectations on our key issues, and we 
     couldn't accept their demands that we remain neutral in all 
     union-organizing campaigns and essentially guarantee to build 
     every future Boeing airplane in the Puget Sound area. In 
     October 2009, we made the Charleston selection.
       Important to our case is the basic fact that no existing 
     work is being transferred to South Carolina, and not a single 
     union member in Washington has been adversely affected by 
     this decision. In fact, we've since added more than 2,000 
     union jobs there, and the hiring continues. The 787 
     production line in Everett has a planned capacity of seven 
     airplanes per month. The line in Charleston will build three 
     additional airplanes to reach our 10-per-month capacity plan. 
     Production of the new U.S. Air Force aerial refueling tanker 
     will sustain and grow union jobs in Everett, too.
       Before and after the selection, we spoke openly to 
     employees and investors about our competitive realities and 
     the business considerations of the decision. The NLRB now is 
     selectively quoting and mischaracterizing those comments in 
     an attempt to bolster its case. This is a distressing signal 
     from one arm of the government when others are pushing for 
     greater openness and transparency in corporate decision 
     making.
       It is no secret that over the years Boeing and union 
     leaders have struggled to find the right way to work 
     together. I don't blame that all on the union, or all on the 
     company. Both sides are working to improve that dynamic, 
     which is also a top concern for customers. Virgin Atlantic 
     founder Richard Branson put it this way following the 2008 
     machinists' strike that shut down assembly for eight weeks: 
     ``If union leaders and management can't get their act 
     together to avoid strikes, we're not going to come back here 
     again. We're already thinking, `Would we ever risk putting 
     another order with Boeing?' It's that serious.''
       Despite the ups-and-downs, we hold no animus toward union 
     members, and we have never sought to threaten or punish them 
     for exercising their rights, as the NLRB claims. To the 
     contrary, union members are part of our company's fabric and 
     key to our success. About 40% of our 155,000 U.S. employees 
     are represented by unions--a ratio unchanged since 2003.
       Nor are we making a mass exodus to right-to-work states 
     that forbid compulsory union membership. We have a sizable 
     presence in 34 states; half are unionized and half are right-
     to-work. We make decisions on work placement based on 
     business principles--not out of emotion or spite. For 
     example, last year we added new manufacturing facilities in 
     Illinois and Montana. One work force is union-represented, 
     the other is not. Both decisions made business sense.
       The world the NLRB wants to create with its complaint would 
     effectively prevent all companies from placing new plants in 
     right-to-work states if they have existing plants in 
     unionized states. But as an unintended consequence, forward-
     thinking CEOs also would be reluctant to place new plants in 
     unionized states--lest they be forever restricted from 
     placing future plants elsewhere across the country.
       U.S. tax and regulatory policies already make it more 
     attractive for many companies to build new manufacturing 
     capacity overseas. That's something the administration has 
     said it wants to change and is taking steps is to address. It 
     appears that message hasn't made it to the front offices of 
     the NLRB.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

                                 S. 964

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Job Protection Act''.

     SEC. 2. APPLICATION TO CERTAIN SPEECH, BUSINESS DECISIONS.

       (a) Unfair Labor Practices.--Section 8(a)(3) of the 
     National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 158(a)(3)) is amended 
     by inserting before the semicolon at the end the following: 
     ``: Provided further, That an employer's expression of any 
     views, argument, or opinion related to the costs associated 
     with collective bargaining, work stoppages, or strikes, or 
     the dissemination of such views, arguments, or opinions, 
     whether in written, printed, graphic, digital, or visual 
     form, shall not constitute or be evidence of antiunion animus 
     or unlawful motive, if such expression contains no threat of 
     reprisal or force or promise of benefit''.
       (b) Prevention of Unfair Labor Practices.--Section 10 of 
     the National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 160) is amended--
       (1) in subsection (a), by inserting after the period at the 
     end the following: ``: Provided further, That the Board shall 
     have no power to order any employer to relocate, shut down, 
     or transfer any existing or planned facility or work or 
     employment opportunity, or prevent any employer from making 
     such relocations, transfers, or expansions to new or existing 
     facilities in the future, or prevent any employer from 
     closing a facility, not developing a facility, or eliminating 
     any employment opportunity unless and until the employer has 
     been adjudicated finally to have unlawfully undertaken such 
     actions--
       ``(1) without advance notice to the labor organization, if 
     any, representing the bargaining unit of the affected 
     employees, of the economic reason(s) for the relocation, shut 
     down, or transfer of existing or future work; or
       ``(2) as a primary and direct response to efforts by a 
     labor organization to organize a previously unrepresented 
     workplace''; and
       (2) by adding at the end the following:
       ``(n) Nothing in this Act shall prevent an employer from 
     choosing where to locate, develop, or expand its business or 
     facilities, or require any employer to move, transfer, or 
     relocate any facility, production line, or employment 
     opportunity, or require that an employer cease or refrain 
     from doing so, or prevent any employer from closing a 
     facility or eliminating any employment opportunity unless the 
     employer has been adjudicated finally to have unlawfully 
     undertaken such actions--
       ``(1) without advance notice to the labor organization, if 
     any, representing the bargaining unit of the affected 
     employees, of the economic reason(s) for the relocation, shut 
     down, or transfer of existing or future work; or
       ``(2) as a primary and direct response to efforts by a 
     labor organization to organize a previously unrepresented 
     workplace.''.
                                 ______