The NLRB’s Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon lodged a complaint alleging the Boeing company’s decision to expand in South Carolina amounted to impermissible retaliation against the union. I wrote about it in this column.

Unsurprisingly, the complaint has become a national issue, properly, because of its sweeping consequences. In the Wall Street Journal, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney explains the damaging effects certain to follow from the NLRB’s logic:

The world the NLRB wants to create with its complaint would effectively prevent all companies from placing new plants in right-to-work states if they have existing plants in unionized states. But as an unintended consequence, forward-thinking CEOs also would be reluctant to place new plants in unionized states—lest they be forever restricted from placing future plants elsewhere across the country.

Read the whole thing. McNerney effectively lays out the company’s position and counters the NLRB allegations.

The Shopfloor blog points out that the NLRB appears to ready to reconsider. Assessing a statement Solomon issued Monday, Carter Wood notes that Solomon said, “At any point in this process, the parties could reach a settlement agreement and we remain willing to participate in any such discussions at the request of either or both parties.” According to Wood,

We read the statement to be Solomon acknowledging the weakness of the NLRB’s complaint against Boeing, which he filed at the behest of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Jennifer Rubin writes in the Washington Post that the complaint makes little sense, legally or politically.

Can the NLRB really prevent a company from exercising its right under its own collective bargaining agreement to set up a plant in a right-to-work state? In 20 years of practicing labor law that sure wasn’t my understanding of how the federal labor law works.

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The complaint will be heard by an administrative law judge and then probably by the NLRB, heavily stacked in labor’s favor at this point. If needed, Boeing will appeal to the federal appeals court. It’s hard to imagine it will be sustained. (Notice how quiet the administration has been on this one.) And frankly, this is one case the Democrats better hope they lose, that is if they want to deprive Republicans of a boffo campaign issue and keep in play in 2012 some important right-to-work states.

Washington State Labor Council president Jeff Johnson had an op-ed in the Seattle Times supporting the union position.

The “Fact Check” portion of the NLRB site wants us to understand the NLRB has not yet acted.

…the case has not yet come before the Board. As the NLRB Fact Sheet explains, the General Counsel and the Board are separate and independent under the NLRA, with the General Counsel functioning as prosecutor and the Board functioning as a court. The case is scheduled to be tried before an administrative law judge, acting under the Board’s authority. That decision could then be appealed to the Board itself for its decision.

Better to pack it in now.