My grandfather was a founding member of the Pipefitters, Welders & Air Conditioning Local 725 in Miami. My father and 2 uncles will be 60 year members this year. Another uncle was a 50 year member when he passed away, and my godfather is almost a 60 year member.

I can remember them all talking about the Union Busters who came in when they were building Turkey Point Nuclear Plant in Homestead, FL. The Buster usually got tossed down stairwells or off the Mezzanine Deck.

When my dad was President of the Local, he never left the house without a pistol because he had people take pot-shots at him and/or tried to run him off the road because of his Union stickers on the car and his truck. By the time I was 9 years old, I was proficient with a rifle and pistol because we were always getting phone calls with death threats, and every Tuesday night when dad was gone to a Union meeting someone would try to break into our house when it was just me, my mom and my sister home. My mom was all of 5'1" and 100 lbs. When I was 10, a man actually came through our back door and was half way in our house and it didn't turn out too well for him. I didn't hesitate to pull the trigger, but only shot him in the leg with a .22. He was able to run away, but the police were able to follow a blood trail and found him a few blocks away. We moved soon after that.

FUCK the Union Busters and anti-Union bullies!

Ghost

poverty to Unions.

That's pretty offensive.

and get back to me

She isn't from India, she's from South Carolina.

And racial/ethnic stereotyping is offensive, no matter who is doing it.

Trikki Nikki's qualifications might get her hired in the republican world, she can not expect to get confirmed for any cabinet post. She is another republican on the long list, that has a rape problem. She vetoed funding for rape crisis centers calling them "special interest groups" The same with combating domestic violence. SC is #2 (Alaska just won the top spot) In deaths relating to domestic violence. She has done everything she could to drag out common sense laws from being enacted. There have been very costly study after study all coming to the same conclusions in ways to combat DV deaths. After 6 years there is finally a bill on the house floor that will take the guns away from someone if they have a RO issued against them.

Now add on top of that, her trying to defund a successful program for under privileged kids. Her DCYS scandal, where her cuts lead to kids in the foster care system getting murdered and raped. Her refusal to fire her friend that was leading the department. Her friend's leadership style, and budget cuts lead to a mass exodus from the department. Leaving case workers in some areas with twice the recommended case load. The privatization of some services, which some were awarded in no bid contracts to political cronies led to mass confusion for remaining case workers. They had no idea where to send parents and kids for help because of the constant reorganizing. As an example one "non profit" went by 3 different names during 4/5 years. They dropped some services that they offered and added others that were duplicates of what the state, itself, offered.

She may have the republican bona fides, but her statements and performance won't pass a democratic smell test. At least it shouldn't.

But onto her anti-union stance. Many in the state are starting to see it as her way of keeping wages suppressed in SC. Boeing has a lot to do with that. They know what the workers elsewhere are getting through the union and how they are treated. They are not happy. The low wages and forced overtime is another issue. When it became known that she gave Boeing over 800 million in tax breaks to move here even republicans were upset. They are paying workers $8 -10 less per hour than their unionized counterparts. They are suffering a talent bleed because of the low pay, forced overtime and poor benefits. The result is that Boeing SC is not meeting the production goals. The workers in WA are spending time fixing SC mistakes, before they can continue production process.

The 787 seems to be turning out to be the perfect lesson on how to NOT build a commercial airplane.

The F-35 has that award for miitary aircraft.

Meanwhile, the 737, the most popular passenger airliner in the world, with almost 4300 unfilled orders, continues to be built at a profit in the Seattle area by a unionized workforce.

I had no idea they were having such a talent drain at the Charlston plant.

Excellent post.

I think it is a new revelation. It is hard to find the actual numbers, but a good many transferred into the state by Boeing. A good many also came from out of state just to get a job. So even the creating X amount of jobs for the state is a farce. As of now they employ something like 6,000 people. It cost over $800,000 in tax breaks for 6,000 jobs and not all those jobs went to in state citizens.

The pay and mandatory overtime they are going back home.

When I googled earlier I wanted to find the article about how shitty they were treating the employees in a right to work state that I read a few months ago. I couldn't find it.

The talent drain is an outcome of that. Training new employees, by employees that were barely trained is resulting in a huge loss for them. When the planes get to Seattle to be completed, they have to fix them first because they are poorly made by poorly trained. They pay somewhere between $12 to 15.00 an hour to build it, then they pay someone $18 to 23.00 an hour to rebuild it in WA. Tell me they aren't also bleeding money.

What it boils down to you get what you pay for. A union friendly state has higher skilled workers, they have a higher GDP and lower poverty rates. If boeing wants a better class of workers, unionizing is the fastest way to get there.

we get to see the political operations of both Carolinas, and both have Republican Governors and controlled General Assemblies. Neither have had success beyond their base, and Governor Nikki Haley has been and continues to be way over her head in that position. The problem is that the Dems in SC have no viable alternative. NC with Governor Pat McCrory (disclosure: know him personally and like him, not his statewide politics) isn't much better, but is generally doesn't do way out things or make incoherent statements, plus he has governed in a competitive environment before rather successfully prior to Governor, 14 years as mayor here. The Dems has only one potential real challenger, and that would be Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, another former mayor. The real leadership in this state is the Moral Monday movement, which is not overtly political, but progressive.

This is another example of Nikki being Nikki.