In his press conference on Wednesday, Pres. Obama was asked by Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman if the NLRB complaint against Boeing was the kind of regulation that chills job growth, the kind the President would himself have called “just plain dumb”. The president had three disclaimers; he doesn’t know all the facts (which was clear), a judge will decide the case and companies always have to follow the law. Here’s the newsflash — he also said this – “…as a general proposition, companies need to have the freedom to relocate… And if they’re choosing to relocate here in the United States, that’s a good thing… what I think defies common sense would be a notion that we would be shutting down a plant or laying off workers because labor and management can’t come to a sensible agreement. So my hope is, is that even as this thing is working its way through, everybody steps back for a second and says, look, if jobs are being created here in the United States, let’s make sure that we’re encouraging that. And we can’t afford to have labor and management fighting all the time, at a time when we’re competing against Germany and China and other countries that want to sell goods all around the world. And obviously, the airplane industry is an area where we still have a huge advantage, and I want to make sure that we keep it.” View video of the statement here.
