COMING APART AT THE SEAMS. (WORK WON'T LOVE YOU BACK) (Nikki Haley and Boeing Co.'s union busting)

• Author: Jaffe, Sarah
• Date: 01 April 2024

The political star of former Republican Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley rose in 2010, when she positioned herself as a smart, modern alternative to the blatantly racist good ol' boys of South Carolina politics. Now she's hoping to do the same thing again by playing a more palatable alternative to Donald Trump and hoping that corporate money will flow her way.

As I write these words, Haley is ostensibly still in the 2024 presidential race, but one has to assume that she knows she is the longest of long shots and is playing her own long game. (Editor's note: Haley dropped out of the race on March 6.) Regardless, you may be wondering why your friendly neighborhood labor columnist is talking about her at all. It's not just because I spent a significant portion of my life living and working in America's least union-dense state, though that does explain how I first came to write about Haley. That was when she rose from obscurity--with the help of Sarah Palin, the former Republican governor of Alaska--to become the first woman governor of the state and the second-ever governor of Indian descent, after Bobby Jindal of my current home state of Louisiana. It's because Haley's favorite hobby, which she repeatedly jokes about, is busting unions. And one of the companies that helped her burnish her anti-union credentials, Boeing, is in the news again as well, after one of its planes lost a door plug in midair, creating a door-sized gaping hole in the side of the plane.

Haley famously boasted that she wears high heels for kicking unions with (though as a fellow wearer of femme footwear, I can't say I understand the logistics). Even before she became South Carolina's governor, she was helping Boeing skirt the unions in its home state of Washington by moving production to her state. South Carolina gave Boeing a package of incentives worth more than $900 million in 2009, an arrangement Haley supported as a state legislator. She then signed an additional $120 million expansion for the company as governor.

Boeing executives weren't shy about citing the militancy of their Washington State workers as a reason for the move. In 2011, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against the company, saying that it had "found reasonable cause to believe that Boeing had violated two sections of the National Labor Relations Act because its statements were coercive to employees and its actions were motivated by a desire to retaliate for past strikes and chill future strike activity."

Such...