Obama touts right-to-work NC manufacturing?

Obama meets non-union manufacturing workers. AP Photo

On his first post-State of the Union whistle stop, pro-union, anti-right-to-work President Obama came to Linamar Corporation outside Asheville, North Carolina. Somehow Obama’s advance team missed this: Linamar is a non-union shop in a right-to-work state.

“I believe we attract new jobs to America by investing in new sources of energy and new infrastructure and the next generation of high-wage, high-tech American manufacturing,” said the president to Canadian-owned Linamar’s 160 workers. “And that’s why I wanted to come down here to Asheville, because there’s a good story to tell here.”

But Linamar didn’t open in an abandoned Volvo plant two years ago because of Obama’s federal spending initiatives. It opened here because North Carolina is a right-to-work state – a fact that union puppet Obama and his party vehemently oppose. Indeed, Obama’s National Labor Relations Board has fought manufacturing firms like Boeing from moving to right-to-work South Carolina.

Linamar’s biggest North Carolina customer is Big Labor-enemy #1 Caterpillar Corporation which has brought a steady drumbeat of manufacturing jobs to the right-to-work south (part of a “southern strategy” that unions loath) – and away from Obama’s Big Labor Illinois Midwest. That should be a lesson not only to President Obama – but also to Michiganians who recently made their state more competitive with right-to-work legislation.

“Right to work is something we talk about in our marketing,” says Ben Teague, a spokesman for the Asheville Chamber of Commerce who confirms that both Caterpillar and Linamark officials like North Carolina’s labor climate. “We fell it is a competitive edge. It means you get workers that want to work at a reasonable wage.”

The president seems remarkably ignorant of this reality.

“I mentioned this last night — Caterpillar, which I know you guys supply, they’re bringing jobs back from Japan,” the president told the non-union Linamark crowd. “We’re seeing this trend of what we call insourcing, not just outsourcing. And the reason is because America has got outstanding workers. ”

Yes, outstanding workers – but in particular, outstanding NON-UNION workers in right-to-work states like North Carolina. That’s what’s driving insourcing.