首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Boeing’s Labour Problems—Moving Factories to Flee Unions A) With corporate offices in Chicago, Boeing employs more than 165,
Boeing’s Labour Problems—Moving Factories to Flee Unions A) With corporate offices in Chicago, Boeing employs more than 165,
admin
2022-01-18
127
问题
Boeing’s Labour Problems—Moving Factories to Flee Unions
A) With corporate offices in Chicago, Boeing employs more than 165,000 people across the United States and in 70 countries. The company claims this represents one of the most diverse, talented and innovative workforces anywhere, and, in these workforces, more than 123,000 employees hold college degrees—including nearly 32,000 advanced degrees—in virtually every business and technical field from approximately 2, 700 colleges and universities worldwide. The enterprise also says it leverages (充分利用) the talents of hundreds of thousands more skilled people working for Boeing suppliers worldwide. Yet with this talented and high-quality labour force, labour-capital issues often occur.
B) Boeing decided a few years ago to build its 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) opines (认为), because it was afraid its union in Washington was too strong. South Carolina is a "right-to-work" state: Title 41, Chapter 7 of the state code makes it illegal for companies and unions to sign a contract in which anyone who works at the company has to join the union. That makes it extremely difficult to organise effective unions, and Boeing hoped it wouldn’t have as many strikes at a plant in South Carolina as it had experienced at its plants in Seattle in recent years. The unions sued over the move, and the National Labor Relations Board has now awarded them a preliminary order blocking the factory from operating until an investigation into whether the company’s shift of production to a union-hostile state in order to avoid union activity constituted anti -union animus (敌意).
C) To lay the groundwork here, it’s important to understand what "right-to-work" means. It doesn’t mean "the government stays out of the labour negotiations business". Right-to-work laws specifically ban employers and unions from signing contracts stipulating that anyone who works at the company has to join the union. That’s a basic step that unions always try to negotiate for, since without it they find it very hard to establish themselves as the negotiating partner with management.
D) Anyway, here’s the sentence I found most amusing in the WSJ’s editorial; "Boeing management did what it judged to be best for its shareholders and customers and looked elsewhere. " Boeing’s motivation for shifting production to an anti-union state was not to benefit customers. If Boeing felt it could raise prices for the airplanes it builds without losing market share, it would do so in a second, regardless of whether that was " best for its customers". Companies try to lower operating costs in order to raise profits or cut prices and win market share, not out of a selfless desire to benefit customers.
E) But the more important flaw here is that the reason why Boeing might have judged its decision to move production to South Carolina "best for its shareholders" was that it didn’t think it violated labour law to flee your union. If it did violate labour law, then Boeing made a bad decision and delivered negative value to its shareholders. To put things another way, if America had labour laws that were uniform from state to state like any other normal economic power, rather than a race-to-the-bottom system where states are pressured to weaken labour laws in order to entice (诱惑) employers, then there would have been no reason for Boeing to move production. There is simply no moral content to Boeing’s decision to move production to South Carolina. Boeing doesn’t get brownie points for engaging in regulatory arbitrage (套利) and stiffing its unions just because it judged that move to be best for shareholders. Congratulating Boeing for trying to deliver shareholder value is like congratulating it for building and selling airplanes. That’s simply what the company does. Boeing’s decision was a judgment about how to play, given its evaluation of the rules of the game. The question of whether companies should be allowed to flee their unions is a question about what the rules of the game ought to be, in order to deliver value to the economy and to society.
F) So, should companies be barred from moving production to a right-to-work state to flee their unions? Niklas Blanchard thinks not. He calls it "protectionism". "While I don’t begrudge (不乐意给) the right for unions to form and attempt to bargain, I also don’t begrudge the right of management the say, ’ FU, we’re going somewhere else’. In an ideal world, they would do this free of government playing for either side. But in this case, we have the government contemplating restricting capital flows between states! The United States, as understood properly, is the largest free trade area in the world. That has been a huge comparative advantage for the US historically, and arguably the reason that we are at the top of the world economic pyramid today. Restricting the flow of capital makes us poorer by reducing productive employment, and increasing prices. It’s a very poor precedent to set. "
G) I think this is a confusing analogy. Mr Blanchard may be right that, given that labour and other business laws differ from state to state, the United States might best be understood as the world’s largest free trade area, rather than a single country. But does anyone think that the United States would be a dramatically less prosperous country if it had uniform labour and business law throughout its territory? Have right-to-work laws in 22 states made such an immense contribution to American prosperity that without them America would not be the world’s largest and wealthiest economy? Really? Seriously? Would American technological ingenuity have been crippled if the whole country had to follow the labour laws that obtain in Silicon Valley?
H) I don’t think so. I think if there were no right-to-work states, American GDP wouldn’t be significantly different than it is today. And if America did have uniform labour laws, then Boeing’s decision as to whether to produce in Puget Sound or South Carolina would have nothing whatsoever to do with unions. If labour laws in South Carolina and Washington were equivalent, the only thing the workers in Puget Sound would have to worry about is whether their demands would lead the company to lose market share or to move production overseas. The first might be a real worry; the latter is a marginal issue for Boeing workers because the company is a defence industry-supported national champion firm.
I) Now maybe unionised Boeing workers should be more worried about hurting the company’s market share as it competes with the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) and with regional-jet builders like Embraer and Bombardier. It certainly sounds like the company has a strike problem. But EADS’s labour force is hardly non-unionised. If Boeing is having more trouble with its unions than its competitors are, it’s possible that the fault lies with the company, rather than with the unions. What’s happening here is that anti-labour laws in certain states allow companies to shift investment to those states in order to get around their unions. And efforts by unions to block that manoeuvre (策略) can then be condemned as "restrictions on capital flow". The issue isn’t freedom of capital. The issue is whether employers can use a threat to move production to a union-hostile state as a negotiating tactic in collective bargaining.
Niklas Blanchard holds the view that restricting the flow of capital is a very poor precedent to set.
选项
答案
F
解析
由题干中的restricting the flow of capital和poor precedent定位到F)段最后两句。细节推断题。由定位句可知,通过减少生产性就业和提高价格来限制资本流动会使我们更贫穷,这将是一个非常糟糕的先例。因此,答案为F)。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/Ptx7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
A、$30-$40.B、$40-$50.C、$50-$60.D、Around$150.A浏览四个选项,根据选项中出现的表示价格的数字可以推测,该题可能涉及某种酒的价格范围。题干问的是男士会考虑什么价格区间的酒。对话中男士说价格在30到40美元
"Thedangerousthingaboutlyingispeopledon’tunderstandhowtheactchangesus,"saysDanAriely,behaviouralpsychologista
"Thedangerousthingaboutlyingispeopledon’tunderstandhowtheactchangesus,"saysDanAriely,behaviouralpsychologista
SixPotentialBrainBenefitsofBilingualEducationA)Brains,brains,brains.Peoplearefascinatedbybrainresearch.Andy
Itmaycomeasasurprisetomanyanexhaustedmotherorfather—butthinkingaboutyourchildrencouldimproveyourmemory,ast
Whatifwecouldreadthemindofaterrorist?ResearchersatNorthwesternUniversityinChicagosaytheyhavetakenastepclos
Children’sHealthcareofAtlantawantstomoveGeorgiaoutofthetop10listforchildhoodobesity(肥胖),officialssaid.
DoestheInternetMakeYouDumber?A)TheRomanphilosopherSenecamayhaveputitbest2,000yearsago:"Tobeeverywhe
A、Getsomehandworkfromhergrandma.B、Bringhisresumetotheemployer.C、Lendsomeextracashtohim.D、Findwhetherthere’s
A、Helosthismother.B、HewasunhappyinCalifornia.C、Hemissedhisaunt.D、Hehadtoattendschoolthere.A选项是个细节描述。听力对话接下来讲,
随机试题
某公司于2013年12月10日申请注册“花果山”商标,2014年3月20日该商标被核准注册。根据《商标法》的规定,该公司第一次申请“花果山”商标续展注册的最后期限应为()。
汽油中有少量烯烃杂质,在实验室中使用最简便的提纯方法是()。
患者,女,74岁,被确诊支气管肺癌1个月,拒绝西医治疗,请中医诊治。症见:刺激性咳嗽,偶或痰中带血,甚则咯血不止,心烦,少寐,手足心热,盗汗,口渴,大便秘结,舌质红,苔薄黄,脉细数。治疗应首选的方剂是
保险费与净资产的比率不超过( )被视为安全。
习近平总书记2020年1月8日在“不忘初心、牢记使命”主题教育总结大会上的讲话中引用了一句古语“君子之过也,如日月之食焉:过也,人皆见之;更也,人皆仰之。”下列选项最能体现这一古语精髓的是:
王某将赵某杀死后逃往外地,因惧怕从重处罚。就给原居住地的公安机关打了一个电话,如实交待了自己所犯的杀人罪行。王某在投案自首途中被公安机关逮捕。王某的行为()。
若做好网络配置后不能进入Internet服务,ping 127.0.0.1是通的,ping网关不通。给出的结论(57)是不正确的。
Thebesttitle(标题)forthisarticlecouldbe______.Atlastthesizeofthenewtrousersis______shorterthanhisrightsiz
Readthefollowingpassage.Arethesentences16-22"Right"or"Wrong"?Ifthereisnotenoughinformationtoanswer"Right"or
A、Two.B、Three.C、Four.D、Five.C
最新回复
(
0
)