Washington, DC (August 21, 2012) – Two Charleston, South Carolina, Boeing company (NYSE: BA) employees filed a federal appeal in their high-profile case against the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union.

The employees filed the appeal with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, D.C., with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.

The NLRB regional office in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, dismissed the workers’ federal charges in late July.

The workers were denied participation in the hearing that concluded the case even though they were granted intervenor status by the NLRB in Washington, D.C. The workers then filed a federal charge against the IAM and its Local 751 union alleging that union officials had abused the NLRB’s adjudicative process by bullying Boeing into contract concessions and guaranteeing production of the company’s 737 Max and future airplane production in Washington State, which does not have a Right to Work law.

The employees also alleged that the IAM union bosses’ strong-arming of Boeing had a chilling effect on Boeing and other companies, deterring them from locating work in South Carolina and other Right to Work states where workers cannot be forced to join or pay fees to a union as a job condition.

Another of the workers’ charges detailed how IAM union bosses retaliated against the Charleston workers after the workers at the Boeing Dreamliner plant expelled the IAM from their workplace before the production line was located there.

The charges pointed out that if the IAM union hierarchy still had a presence in the South Carolina plant, then the South Carolina workers’ jobs would not have been at risk. Even NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon – who issued the NLRB’s complaint against Boeing – admitted in Congressional testimony that it was inconceivable that IAM union officials would have pursued charges against Boeing if workers had not removed the union from their workplace.

«The IAM union bosses’ dangerous abuse of federal labor law, which is supposedly intended to protect the rights of individual workers, has set a devastating precedent to discourage job providers from locating work in states with Right to Work laws on the books – the very states luring job providers and independent-minded workers alike,» said Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in more than 250 cases nationwide per year.