Boeing’s mere presence in South Carolina was already viewed as a union-busting move when the company first opened an aircraft production plant there in 2011 rather than Washington state, where Boeing had unionized operations. South Carolina has the lowest union membership rate in the United States at just 2.7% of workers. The National Labor Relations Board filed a federal complaint against Boeing for the move, accusing the company of violating federal labor law, before dropping it after the company came to an agreement with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).

Since then, Boeing has fought to prevent unionization efforts of their workers in South Carolina. In February 2017, union organizers came up short in attempting to unionize about 3,000 Boeing workers. But organizers found success in May 2018, when over 60% of the nearly 200 Boeing flight line workers in North Charleston, South Carolina, voted to form a union, despite an aggressive anti-union campaign led by Boeing which included radio ad buys and attempts to delay and stop the election from occurring.

Boeing is formally appealing against the election results with the National Labor Relations Board.

“This is where the problems come in with US labor law. Boeing has a zillion options available to it,” said Lee Adler, a professor at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “All these things get a chance to get litigated and it slows down the process. While the process slows down, what happens at the plant site is they start firing people knowing in a year or two they might have to pay them some wages for firing due to union activity, but it scares people and scares them enough to think maybe they did the wrong thing to vote for the union.”