Republican lawmakers and conservative pundits claim that an April 20 National Labor Relations Board complaint against Boeing for building a 787 plant in South Carolina–a so-called right-to-work state–somehow arose out of the Obama Administration’s desire to punish the company for behaving in its own best interest.
In fact, the NLRB complaint charges that Boeing’s choice of Charleston, S.C., as the location of a second assembly line for the 787, rather than the traditional Puget Sound area of Washington state, amounts to unlawful retribution for past strikes and an effort to chill future strike activity. The Board has set June 14 for a hearing before an NLRB administrative law judge in Seattle, where the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and management will each get a chance to present evidence and arguments.
Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with New Jersey Monthly magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for Aviation International News in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.
