ECONOMY/UNION: “Boeing came to South Carolina more than seven years ago to establish a second assembly line for its 787 Dreamliner aircraft. At least part of the attraction, analysts said, was the area’s lightly unionized labor force — giving the company more leverage over the union at its main operations outside Seattle.
Now that equation is being put to the test. Workers here will vote Wednesday on whether to unionize, an early test of organized labor’s strength in the Trump era.
A vote to form the union would be a major victory for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which the workers would join.
‘If Boeing loses, it removes the ability to hold nonunion Charleston over the heads of the union in Seattle, to beat up that union for more concessions in the future,’ said Scott Hamilton, the managing director of Leeham Company, an aviation analysis firm in Bainbridge Island, Wash.”
– Noam Scheiber and Christopher Drew, “Union Vote at Boeing Plant Tests Labor’s Sway Under Trump,” The Wall Street Journal online, Feb. 13, 2017