For months, South Carolina Govenor Nikki Haley begged for the National Labor Relations Board to back off her state and allow Boeing to create thousands of manufacturing jobs. At the time, the NLRB was suing and had the full support of President Obama to stop the plant because South Carolina is a right to work state. Now, Obama is touting the plant as an example of successful manufacturing in the United States. Joel Gehrke has more:
President Obama rallied with union workers at a Boeing plant in Washington, but he praised the manufacturing conducted by Boeing in South Carolina, even though his National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) tried to close the South Carolina plant at the behest of the Washington union workers.
"This company is a great example of what American manufacturing can do in a way that nobody else in the world can do it," Obama told the assembled workers this afternoon at the Everett, Wash., Boeing plant. "And the impact of your success, as I said, goes far beyond the walls of this plant. Every Dreamliner that rolls off the assembly line here in Everett supports thousands of jobs in different industries all across the country. Parts of the fuselage are manufactured in South Carolina and Kansas," Obama noted before mentioning factories in other states.
The NLRB tried to close that South Carolina plant, though, after union workers in Washington argued that Boeing had built the new factory in the South Carolina -- which is a right to work state -- in retaliation against the Machinist Union strikes that had slowed production in Washington state. The NLRB dropped the complaint in December after Boeing signed a new contract with the machinists