Back in April, when the International Association of Machinists cancelled an election at Boeing’s plant in North Charleston, South Carolina, in charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board, the union accused the company of inciting violence.
Its charges alleged that, somehow, Boeing was behind the threats that union organizers received when conducting visits to employees’ homes.
Now, citing “insufficient evidence,” the NLRB has dismissed those charges, according to Charleston’s Post & Courier.
“We said when the IAM filed these charges that they were frivolous, and we’re happy to receive confirmation that the NLRB agrees that these are baseless allegations,” Boeing South Carolina spokesman Rob Gross said Tuesday.
In a written statement issued when the complaint was filed, the IAM alleged that a Boeing employee threatened two union recruiters at gunpoint while they were making home visits to raise support for the vote.
That was in addition to alleged online threats.
“The NLRB concluded there was no evidence proving the individual who threatened IAM organizers with a gun was an agent of Boeing, or otherwise acting at the behest of Boeing,” IAM spokesman Frank Larkin said Tuesday. “And since the online threats were veiled rather than explicit, and weren’t made directly by Boeing, the board dismissed the charges.”
Larkin said the IAM is considering appealing the dismissal. Such an appeal would have to be filed by June 3.
If the union does appeal the NLRB’s dismissal, it is very possible it will look even more desperate in the eyes of the employees it is trying to unionize.
However, while the union is vowing to continue its attempts at unionizing Boeing’s South-Carolina workers, it may be some time before the union’s organizers visit employees’ homes again.
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