From the headquarters newspaper of Boeing (that would be The Chicago Tribune:)
Unless Boeing Co. can win a long-term contract that bars strikes by its largest union, the aerospace company will build a second production line for its new 787 jetliner outside of Washington state, members of the state’s congressional delegation say.
Because, you know, the 787 has become an international punch line, because of, er, um, stuff that kind of happened.
On Tuesday, Boeing said it would pay $580 million for a Vought Aircraft Industries plant in North Charleston, S.C., that makes large sections of its much-delayed 787.
Deliveries of the 787 have been postponed by nearly two years partly because of problems with components made by suppliers and work that suppliers didn’t complete. Those problems are expected to cost Boeing billions of dollars in added expenses and penalties.(emphasis mine)
Boeing is using suppliers from around the world to build large sections of the plane that are later assembled at the company’s commercial aircraft plant in Everett, north of Seattle. Boeing has booked orders for a record 850 of the planes, though some 60 orders have been canceled so far this year.
So the problems from “suppliers around the world,” many of them presumably non-union, mean the Boeing lapdogs in this state should um, er, do something.
Gregoire said that before Boeing decides on where to place a second 787 line, she plans to go to company headquarters in Chicago and make the case for the Puget Sound region before Boeing’s board.
Gregoire said a no-strike agreement is an ambitious goal for Boeing, and is something that cannot be achieved through legislation. Dicks said any such agreement would have to involve some kind of binding independent arbitration of disputes between Boeing and the Machinists.
Yeah, because nothing would make more sense than for Boeing to move production to right-to-starve states where inferior parts were made, or in some cases, not made. You know, the places that screwed things up for the 787 in the first place. Somehow, in Boeing-logic-land, this is the fault of unions.
Nobody wants to see Washington state workers lose jobs, but there should be limits to this kind of pathetic and transparent corporate blackmail. A “no strike clause” is in reality a “no union clause;” they might as well just dissolve the machinists’ union.
Which is, obviously, the point. Good luck with this, elected Dems. You’re going to need it.
Never quite figured out why Boeing followed Airbus’ big expensive mistake and spread the work around factories which are far apart.
Maybe they should take a look at The Toyota Way. Even Walmart insists on vendors having offices located near Walmart’s hdqtrs.
“Never quite figured out why Boeing followed Airbus’ big expensive mistake and spread the work around factories which are far apart.”
Maybe I’m mistaken, but isn’t this a strategy to gain congressional support for the federal gov. to buy their products? If you manufacture products over more area, you have more legislatures who don’t want to lose the business you create in your district.
With the exception of the 747-400 which was delayed a month or two but caught up quickly and the 767 tanker, all previous models and derivatives have ben on time, of good quality, safe, and successful.
With union guys.
The company’s new slogan from the finance department: “We’re going to save money no matter how much it costs.”
Our phrase: “The chart boys running the show are presiding over the demise of a once great and proud company that impacted world history.”
If you really look at the man hours per model, Puget Sound labor costs are pretty darn small in consideration of the total cost.
The most wasteful stuff today is the gigantic overhead that the chart boys have installed, with hundreds of dozens and dozens of hundreds of chart boys, yes men, special assignment specialists (usually on special assignment), wannabes, heavy breathers, umbrella holders, lean team specialists, flashlight holders, team focals, team leaders, efficiency specialists, continuous quality improvement focals, and other “walking FOD.”
@2 You are correct, and they say the overseas suppliers are to encourage orders. But that was the reason Airbus did it and it didn’t work then either.
If you can’t deliver a plane because you’ve created a chain with a bunch of weak links in it…nobody is going to place orders for them even if the “links” are in their countries. Boeing swallowed a poison pill when it bought McDonnell Douglass. Those guys are about making money…not airplanes.
The unions (engineer and machinists) should say good riddance to Boeing and start a new engineering-focussed company. THAT’s something I wouldn’t mind subsidizing with tax breaks.
I wish Boeing luck in assembling the world’s first composite jetliner with $6.25-an-hour hillbilly labor.
But I sure as hell won’t fly on it.
How about if Boeing shows how serious they are and propose that (as a percentage) any increases made to management or CEO compensation, pay and benefits, will be matched for employees.
Give the CEO a 30% “bonus” same for hourly employees. Mamagement recieves additional stock options, matched for other employees. Wouldn’t something like that show they are committed to being one company?
@7 Ooooo!! We can’t do that!! That would be So-shu-lism!!
@7 (continued) No, I think the best solution is don’t work for Boeing. Better yet, don’t work for anyone! Employers can’t jerk you around if you don’t have an employer. Owning capital pays better than working for wages, anyway, plus wage earners pay much higher taxes than capitalists. There’s just no rhyme or reason in working. I don’t work! I live off the fat of the land just like Republicans do. Working makes no sense. And if you don’t work, you don’t have to worry about Boeing moving to South Carolina or some other right-to-be-a-slave state, because you won’t be one of their slaves. No one should work. Let management build the planes themselves. It’s time they did something useful instead of sitting in their corner offices dreaming up more ways to screw the workers and pick taxpayers’ pockets.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/.....ornia.html
This is why Boeing didn’t select California as a site for its potential second production line. Aerospace was a huge industry there at one time.
Unfortunately, legislators like Lisa Brown, and “progressive” advocates like David want Washington to emulate California’s example in terms of taxation, environmental regulations, and other factors. Look at the consequences.
Luigi, damn powerful piece. Puddy commends you for delivering it. Watch out though, the HA loonie libtardos will look at parts of the article as anecdotal!
Has Boeing built anything in the last 20 years without the help- and a lot of it- from Washington State and the federal government?
But Rabbit, if you want health care, the only way Grassely thinks you should get it is go work for the federal government.
The very area he would like to shrink.
Or another way of looking at it, stop being an entrepreneur and go work for the government, stop generating taxes and just live off of them.
Is that the best plan the republicans have?
Most of you have obviously never been to a Boeing plant nor understand the business.
I’m in the aerospace business. It’s more complex than you can imagine, technically, politically, and financially.
Any knee-jerk reaction to this is just that. There won’t be a simple solution to this and if there is it will be the wrong one.
Before getting too protective over our marriage to the Lazy B, folks around here may want to look over at Detroit.
I do not trust either the Union or the (Chicago) managers.
We, WAstate, the US need an effin industrial policy.
It’s pretty safe to say that if it weren’t for the last machinists’ strike Boeing would have a lot more egg on its face. At the very least, they’ve been able to blame the help for the year and a half delay after the rollout of what everyone now admits was more a pasted-together mockup than a prototype. Furthermore, all sorts of stories have leaked out (and none have been denied) that the strike allowed time to discover and correct a whole raft of design and fabrication problems, which otherwise might have led to a rushed flight-test program becoming an unthinkable disaster.
@15 It’s interesting to note that after all the “cross-pollination” between Boeing and its Chinese suppliers, China is about to roll out its own jetliner that’s virtually a copy of a recent-model 737.
Boeing Executives blame everything on work stopage-simply its the workers and unions fault. If Executive’s think there is no work stopage in the Carolinas think again – they have hurricanes and tornadoes. One thing comes to mind with all this bad economy and a lot of CEO’s and Execs sacrificing their bonuses on behalf of the company, how come I do not hear Boeing Execs offering the company their bonuses or even deferring them. Hmm yeah lets blame the mechanics, wait a minute was’nt it the managements idea to hire new people to buil the plastic plane? hmm again. Lets blame the mechanics even though older mechanics volunteered to build the plastic plane and was rejected by management. yep its the mechanics fault.
Luigi, and Pud.
Nice article. Thanks.
However, you missed an important part of the article.
In a two-party system, the opposition is supposed to act as a counterbalance to a majority run amok. All the Republican party should have to do is to step in and promise peace, freedom, and good government.
Unfortunately, California’s GOP has a lot in common with Washington’s (this Washington, not the other one). They are much more interested in ideological purity than in any of those things. When you sound like talk radio, you become like talk radio… a tightly-knit sideshow which gets 15% of the mindshare. If that happens, whose fault is that anyhow?
@5..if you look at who ran the company after the Mac-Douglas deal, one could easily say that it was Mac-Douglass who bought Boeing – with Boeings money.
Can anyone recall how the GOP was demanding that we let GM fail?
Remember how they told us that it was really, really important, for reasons having to do with complicated economic and social stuff, that we not step in and fuck with the “free market” outcome of GM’s decades of bad decisions?
So now that Boeing management is poised to make a series of really, really bad decisions, decisions that promise to shape the company and its fate for decades to come, why is it suddenly so important for us to step in?
And if government is really going to step in, why are we being asked to step in a ways that simply promote the bad decision making?
What would be wrong with government, using both its organizational power, its regulatory power, as well as the sizable stake held in private companies by government pension and investment funds, to push for a change in management?
Standing aside and letting bad managers ruin good companies does not further anyone’s interests, except of course the bad managers.
JSA, how goes it dude. Sorry Puddy couldn’t hook up with you for coffee back in May. Any way, the CA unions took on the Republicans and Ahhhnold with his propositions. You forgot those propositions. Let Puddy remind you…
Firs visit California’s Department of Finance Web site. California’s annual state spending has grown from $78 billion in fiscal 2004 to $103 billion in fiscal 2009.
Why? Puddy Remembers the brouhaha on this blog over Schwarzenegger’s four 2005 initiatives and how HA Libtardos cheered when they lost now look at the state. Can’t blame all this on Ahhhhhhhhrnold.
Proposition 73, was the governator’s proposal to restrict political spending by public employee unions, died.
Proposition 74, was the governator’s proposal to make teachers work longer to achieve tenure, died.
Proposition 76 was the governator’s main proposal to slow the growth of state spending. It died.
Proposition 77, was the governator’s proposal to redraw legislative and congressional districts, was died.
Remember Puddy placed on this blog how the rich Dummocraptics are leaving California due to the Dummocraptics legislature raising taxes over and over and over. Many HA Libtardos pooh-poohed it but couldn’t find anything to refute it.
Now you see what happens when Dummocraptics take over and lobby on TV and run the state overriding common sense proposals.
Now who runs the legislature – Dummocrapts. Remember the recent budget battle? Now the CA senate president Darrell Steinberg is pushing to raid much of the state’s proposed $4.5 billion budget reserve for FY 2010 to bankroll key health, welfare and college aid programs instead of cutting programs and stopping spending. Butt guess what JSA, those are projected surpluses, they don’t exist, at all! And JSA services to illegal aliens is costing California approximately $5 Billion a year. That quickly adds up over the years.
And guess which union was there L E A D I N G the anti-Arnold proposition charge…? SEIU clueless wonders favrit union!
I have a multi-millionaire buddy who moved to WA State from CA. Why did he move? Taxes baby!
So in your world, unions, representing the workers, should not be allowed to affect politics and their futures?
puddy, why do you hate american workers?
Blew John, Puddy made a mistake it was Prop 75 not 73. Butt, who said Puddy was against American workers Fool?
Proposition 75: Public Employee Union Dues. Required Employee Consent for Political Contributions. Initiative Statute.
* Prohibits the use by public employee labor organizations of public employee dues or fees for political contributions except with the prior consent of individual public employees each year on a specified written form.
* Restriction does not apply to dues or fees collected for charitable organizations, health care insurance, or other purposes directly benefitting the public employee.
* Requires public employee labor organizations to maintain and submit records to Fair Political Practices Commission concerning individual public employees’ and organizations’ political contributions.
* These records are not subject to public disclosure.
Man, you are as tedious and tendentious as rhp6033. Do you have any memory at all? Apparently not. You forgot when Puddy placed this late last year on HA Libtardos. So here you go again…
“Teachers union settles campaign finance lawsuit Agreement to cost WEA $975,000”
Butt, you forgot when Puddy also placed this on HA Libtardos. As you can see WEA tried to stifle free speech by teachers. Why? Well it’s obvious.
Now to California. When unions extract dues and spend it willy nilly for political activites does the union rank-and-file have anything to say over it? Hell No. Did you know the SEIU canned 74 people because of it’s spending over $85 million to help “the messiah” get elected? 74 people are gone in the union cuz they spent $85 million of union dues. EXTORTION.
BTW Blew John, here is something not commented on by clueless wonder.
Puddy is against union dues extortion when members disagree with the union hack learder’s politics. That’s what that proposition was for.
Hey, the Boeing exec’s have been incredibly incompetent:
They tried to build the new plane from parts from all over the world (so they could sell it to those places) and it did not work.
They tried to bribe the airforce – and now they still don’t have a tanker deal.
They contracted for shoddy equipment from SC non-union entrepeneurs – then they had to buy the plant and remake all the crappy parts they got from SC.
Now the big whiners at Boeing are blaming the union strike (remember, they could have settled for what they got without a strike – but they were trying to not negotiate and “make a point”). The only point they made was how stupid the management is.
Now the big whiners in management want to take their exhorbitant executive pay and stuff it up the ass of the union. They want a no-strike clause to emasculate the union due to their own stupidity – or they will pick up and move.
Time to buy airbus stock – another incompetently run US company is more concerned with union breaking than with putting out a quality product.
Typical republican BS – if you can’t competently run a company – then blame the union, even though the non-union Sc plant put out crap that you had to redo….some logic.
Once again NutsTooTight is full of shit. http://smg.photobucket.com/alb.....nt=bs2.gif
Let’s see who gave to whom…
Harry Stonecipher –
$38,700 Republican
$35,150 Democrat
$23,221 special interest
total: $97,071
Boeing Company 2008 – strike year
Total Contributions $2,320,047
Dummocrapts $1,321,429 57% Democrats
Republicans $994,370 43% Republicans
Another of the tedious and tendentious. Puddy gives credit to the author.
Sad news, mommy, sad news. Boeing went bankrupt in 1927 and all dividends have been paid by the US taxpayer as they continue to receive enormous subsidies through the military, the CI lying A, and NS we listen to you A.
They have sucked off so many tool and die makers and super skilled other blue collar workers that they and Lockheed pretty much killed American manufactured products.
Die, Boeing, die.
The entire aerospace industry is propped up by Pentagon pork–it’s been years since any company but Boeing has been able to profitably build large commercial airliners, and that’s with an abundance of tax breaks and semi-covert subsidies. It’s also one of only two heavy-jet manufacturers in the entire non-Communist world, and the other one is essentially owned and operated by the European Union’s government.
If Boeing stumbles badly on this project, there are some pretty massive implications for the way we’re going to live and get around in the not very distant future. The airlines are struggling to keep afloat, hoping and praying that a new generation of planes with signnificantly better fuel efficiency and lower maintenance costs will return them to profitability. Without that, the massive air-travel network we’ve grown accustomed to will likely fall apart, with even greater repercussions to the world economy.
@25 This suggests Boeing at least wasn’t so delusional as to think the neocons weren’t going to have their asses handed to them last November. You don’t get help from Uncle Sam by sucking up to your idealogical soulmates. You do so by sucking up to whoever’s going to be holding the checkbook.
And, you can bet your britches that while the Boeing brass are threating Washington’s Congressional delegation with threats of pulling the plug, they’re simultaneously twisting the arms of South Carolina’s political potentates trying to wring all kinds of favors out of them.
Boeing’s latest broadside to Washington politicians about needing a “no-strike” pledge is easy to analyze. Boeing is either:
(a) Bluffing, like it did in the late 1960’s when it threatened to build 747’s in Wichita; or
(b) Has already decided to move, and is pulling a “Clay Bennett” by making impossible demands of the local politicians and the union knowing there was no way they could agree – thus trying to re-direct local anger away from the executives and towards local politicians and the union leadership.
Either way, there is nothing for the local politicians to do – throwing more money at Boeing wouldn’t affect the decision either way.
The fact that Boeing has already made up it’s mind, one way or another, is shown by the fact that it hasn’t even made a proposal to the Union regarding the no-strike pledge. And, of course, the Union could in no way agree to that without some guarantees, like submission of disputes to binding arbitration, etc.
Boeing management in Chicago needs to get back to the assembly line floor and realize that it’s their own policies which are causing the problems. A move to S. Carolina will only compound their problems, not solve them.
I keep wondering what, after the “acquisition” of McDonnell Douglas, they must have been putting in Phil Condit’s coffee. The man clearly lost both his mind and his soul.
Having known some people who were involved in the 777 project it is hard to believe the same company is trying to build the 787.
Though in many ways it isn’t the same company. Many of the managers Boeing had at that time have left the company only to be replaced by McDonald-Douglas people or people hired by them.
The worst decision Boeing ever made was buying McDonald-Douglas, the second worst was not firing a majority of the MD mid to upper level management upon taking over, the third worst mistake was not promoting Alan R. Mulally and letting him leave for Ford. If any of those decisions had gone differently many of the disasters of the 787 program wouldn’t have happened. Furthermore it is doubtful management would have pushed on the Union as hard as they did last year which would have avoided the strike.
Supposedly the primary reason for outsourcing was risk-sharing and not taking on all of the R&D costs themselves. Given the problems with the 787 program and having to bail out Vought one wonders if there have been any real savings.
Mind you with the exception of the Vought plant in South Carolina it is hard to argue labor costs are the real reason for all of the outsourcing. Japan and Italy are hardly low labor-cost countries and the Wichita workers at Spirit are still IAM and make wages similar to what they did when they worked for Boeing.
Oh and for all of you who insist Washington and/or Seattle is just as bad a place for doing business as California might want to check the lists put out by publications such as Forbes and Business Week.
You might be surprised to find this area near the top rather than near the bottom.
It’s certainly become apparent that Mulally wasn’t as crazy as many of us thought he was when he left. He must have been seeing some things from the inside that he really didn’t like.
Of course, having to watch that fossil Stonecipher screwing the help must have been enough to induce nausea in and of itself.
“Given the problems with the 787 program and having to bail out Vought one wonders if there have been any real savings.”
Generally speaking, no.
Just looking at the 787 program, Boeing should have invested in large auto-clave facilities within the Boeing/Everett complex, which would have allowed it to build the next generation of airplanes rather cheaply over the long term. By using Spirit and Vought and Global Aeronotica, Boeing not only began a major aircraft program with little control over it’s major componants, but also was becoming handcuffed to those same suppliers for future programs because it still didn’t have it’s own facilities to use in future programs.
Building auto-clave facilities in Everett may well have eliminated the need to design and build an entirely new freighter (the “Dreamlifter” that is certified by the FAA only to fly major 787 compopnants around the world.
After all the problems over the past two years (yesterday was the two-year anniversary of the 787 “roll-out”, before it was rolled right back into the factory), Boeing finally now has the auto-clave facilities of Vought, but only after losing almost two years worth of aircraft deliveries, most of it’s lead in the race against Airbus, and hundreds of millions of dollars in man-hours. It may have recouped a bit by paying less for the facilities than they were worth, after offsetting claims Boeing probably has against Vought for delivery delays and quality problems.
Spirit has already entered into contracts to also supply portions of the A350XW to AEEDS/Airbus. Although there is some segregation between the programs, that doesn’t prevent Airbus from taking advantage of the learning curve and skills acquired by Spirit in the 787 program. Alenia will also probably manufacture portions of the tail section of the A350XW for Airbus. At least the purchase of Vought facilities in S. Caroline keeps them from becoming an Airbus supplier for the A350XW, also.
But Boeing’s “risk-sharing” strategy reminds me a lot of IBM’s strategy when it entered the PC market in the early 1980’s. IBM wanted to get into the market quickly and cheaply, so it purchased off-the-shelf processors from Intel and a non-exclusive license for the operating system from Microsoft. This meant that IBM really didn’t have a patentable invention, and anybody who wanted to reverse-engineer it could do so and the market was flooded with “PC Clones”. By out-sourcing so much of it’s design and production of the 787, Boeing is ensuring that any other aircraft manufacturers (including Mitsubishi in Japan and the new companies starting to build airplanes in China and India) can do the same.