Boeing Co (BA.N) handily defeated a union drive by workers at the company’s aircraft factory in South Carolina on Wednesday, as almost three-quarters of workers at the plant who voted rejected union representation.
The secret ballot vote, conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) at polling locations throughout the North Charleston plant, was the first for Boeing and a high-profile test for organized labor in the nation’s most strongly anti-union state.
The NLRB said 74 percent of the 2,828 workers who cast ballots voted against joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).
“We will continue to move forward as one team,” Joan Robinson-Berry, vice president in charge of Boeing South Carolina, said in the post.
In a statement, IAM lead organizer Mike Evans said: “We’re disappointed the workers at Boeing South Carolina will not yet have the opportunity to see all the benefits that come with union representation.”
The results come just before U.S. President Donald Trump is due to visit Boeing’s South Carolina plant on Friday, as the world’s largest planemaker rolls out the first completed 787-10, the largest version of its Dreamliner.
Any remarks Trump makes at the factory could bring into sharper focus his views on organized labor before he chooses appointees to fill vacant seats on the five-member NLRB.
“I think he will cheer the ‘no’ vote,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California Berkeley specializing in labor and the global economy.
“I think he’s going to make the case that he wants to see the plant succeed and do everything to create a more competitive environment.”
