On the recordSeptember 15, 2011
Today the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2587, the Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act. This legislation, should it become law, would destroy a pillar of America's economic prosperity when we need it most. The bill strips the National Labor Relations Board of its ability to sanction companies that retaliate against employees seeking to exercise a basic constitutional right. The facts of the case, though often misreported or obscured by partisan disdain for working people, are clear. Under a federal statute that has been in force since 1935, workers at the Boeing Corporation complained that the corporation moved a manufacturing plant to a different state in direct retaliation for labor strikes. The National Labor Relations Board, as is prescribed in the same statute, investigated the case. As part of their investigation, NLRB investigators collected evidence from both parties. The NLRB has not yet determined whether this evidence warrants a complaint against Boeing. In short: the process which has been in place for more than 75 years is working as designed, but it has not been completed. This bill would halt the investigation of this legally introduced complaint, and it would gut the statute that governs the relationship between workers and bosses. At a time when the President and others have correctly argued that the U.S. government should not be assisting corporations to ship jobs overseas, we are gutting the U.S.…
