Sen. Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, expressed confidence that Republicans will win the fight against the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) power grab in South Carolina. “We’re going to win that one,” Hatch told The Daily Caller, referring to the NLRB’s recent charge against The Boeing Company for plans to open a non-union factory in the southern state.
In remarks to the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) at the National Press Club on Friday, Hatch compared what the NLRB is doing to judicial activism.
Hatch is one of several Republican senators who signed onto a letter Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, wrote to President Obama on Thursday demanding he immediately rescind nominations for the NLRB’s Acting General Counsel, Lafe Solomon, and board member Craig Becker.
“The NLRB, at the behest of Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon, has taken unprecedented legal action against The Boeing Company to prevent it from expanding productions into South Carolina, a state that assures workers the freedom not to join a union as a condition of employment,” the letter reads. “We consider this an attack on millions of workers in 22 right-to-work states, as well as a government-led act of intimidation against American companies that should have the freedom to choose to build plants in right-to-work states.”
The Senators said they would use all the power they had to fight the NLRB if Obama didn’t follow through and rescind their nominations.
Becker and Solomon were both recess-appointed to the NLRB and, in Becker’s case, all 41 Republican senators wrote Obama to urge him not to make Becker’s recess appointment after the Senate rejected his nomination the first time around. Solomon has not yet appeared before the Senate for confirmation.
UPDATE 1:22 p.m.:
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli ripped the NLRB at the RNLA event as well.
“Many of you have heard about the Boeing situation in South Carolina where the National Labor Relations Board has basically said that expanding into a right-to-work state to avoid union disruption is an ‘unfair labor practice,’” Cuccinelli said. “Now, if that is an unfair labor practice, what exactly is the point of having a right-to-work state? I would argue there’s none.”
Cuccinelli said the NLRB’s actions against Boeing are a “threat to every right-to-work state.”
“It goes well beyond their appropriate authority, Congressionally delegated authority,” he said. “Again, an example where one of these agencies is outside their own legal boundaries. This is going on over and over throughout the federal government.”
