I am disappointed with both sides in the current labor dispute; with Boeing and their “negotiation team” being so arrogant, wrong-headed, and self absorbed; and with the Union, for not being more media aggressive about the future of union jobs and the strategic planning within the company itself.
First off, the whole wrongly conceived notion that hourly union workers don’t care about the company, are greedy and lazy, and want to bleed the company dry is nonsense. Many hourly employees there are from families of generations of Boeing workers. As for myself, both my mother and father worked there when they first came to Seattle. In actuality, these people care about the long term viability and competitiveness of Boeing far more than Johnny-come-lately carpetbaggers like Jim McNerney the C.E.O, and others in management who are looking at short term stock price, their next outlandish bonus, and the golden parachute outta-here as the prime drivers in decision making! The average age of hourly/union employees is somewhere around 47 years old and most have many years of seniority and a pension to try and protect. Most are also either from this area or have settled here and have a great deal of loyalty to the company and to the area. The truth is WE the union members are the true Boeing, not a handful of upper management mercenaries.
Through reading all the various comments and blogs where people who are on the outside, looking in, and don’t really understand the issues one thing becomes clear. Many people think that hourly workers should be happy to just have a job, any job. They should be just happy to have a check, any check. They should never speak out about how their company is run or mismanaged. Even if they have worked there for many, many years and own stock in the company. They should work themselves to death and die in the traces, and never, ever, speak out, or horror of horrors, go on strike. Where this cowardly, daddy-knows-best attitude came from floors me, it seems to be a talking point from the Republican convention. They say we have a bad economy now, so we should be happy with anything, well guess what? The fifties are not coming back. People in this country need to start questioning and questioning hard these management people, and politicians that are selling our country down the river for short term gain.
At the start of the negotiation process the Boeing management team started demanded numerous and significant takeaways from previous contracts, now why would they do that? Having just sold a used car recently, I know when someone really low balls you from the start it makes a person angry; it shows an attitude of disrespect. This approach says that you think the other person in the negotiation is desperate, or dumb, or both and you want to take advantage of them in an unethical way, kicking them in the teeth when they are down. Everyone knows this, it is a universal understanding, so why… (Assuming you wanted to sign a contract and go to work), would you start out this way? It is an antagonistic mean-spirited slant at the very beginning of talks.
The Boeing Company has a huge backlog of orders, has money in the bank and is doing very well in most areas; the Machinists are clearly doing their job and holding up their end. Airbus realizes they can’t currently compete with Boeing looking at the Dollar/Euro exchange rate and are in fact trying to move significant production to the US where costs for experienced, educated workers are cheaper. So when Boeing says they can’t afford to pay the current wages they are lying and everyone who can read knows this. Boeing’s only real thorny issues are the 767 tanker bid and the 787 production delays, which have nothing to do with unions, or wages in the Puget Sound.
These two issues in fact have to do with monumental failures from Boeing’s upper management. The tanker military bid was side-railed by yet another example of unethical behavior by Boeing upper management, something they have a long and well established reputation for. Both of the last two C.E.O’s before the current problem child arrived were involved in ethics scandals and were fired. The 787 has been a failure in scheduling and delivery of historical proportions, being the most costly decision making error in the 86 year history of the Boeing Company, this is mainly due to the holy grail of off-loading. In the past many, many management screw-ups could be fixed by abusing the employees with forced overtime. In this case this isn’t possible and the result is the current fiasco. The Air Force tanker program with spare parts and modifications is considered to be worth 100 billion dollars. The 787 not being able to fly, due to a Pollyanna supply chain strung all over the world, is also costing billions in lost stock price and plane deliveries. Just think what a hit that plane would have been flying through the sky during the last fuel crisis! Think of where the BA stock would be with one of those planes taking off every few days! Of course the fact that Boeing off-loaded so much of the 787 just helped Airbus in their quest for the tanker, arguing that it was a viable business model. The true cost of off-loading isn’t just losing jobs for the United States and giving the competition training and technology, also lost is program security and as Boeing has learned very dearly….basic control of your programs.
When will the 787 fly? Who knows..McNerney states the program is not “leading edge but bleeding edge”, meaning the program will bleed billions of dollars until sometime way down the road supposedly, it breaks even. This money, this lost profit, will never be recouped regardless of his pie-in-the-sky, off load at any cost philosophy. He just needs to be gotten rid of, if anything begs to be off-loaded at Boeing it is the top management, where is the accountability!? His ideas have proven to be abject failures, just as his baseball team mate at Yale, George Bush’s plans have proven beyond any doubt to be catastrophes. We need to cut the apron strings with this type of divisive, short thinking leadership.
In this regard the machinists union should go on the offensive taking out full page ads in the Wall Street Journal, titled “OFFLOADING: a failed aerospace nightmare”. Details should be published about the amount of lost revenue this offloading maelstrom has caused and then compared to how much the wages and benefits package that Boeing says it cannot afford measures up. Also head to head comparisons should be given comparing the number and wages of mechanics at Airbus and the same comparisons for management numbers, tiers/layers of management, and compensation. We all know Boeing doesn’t want that laundry aired. If Boeing really wants to be competitive let’s look at the big expense hitters first and foremost, let’s not step over a $20 bill to pick up a nickel.
Instead of always speaking about how certain new initiatives will save money let’s look at how much they cost and compare. The public has been so brainwashed into thinking off-loading saves money they think it is inevitable, it is not. The simple fact is US workers are not paid the highest in the world. Our economy has been crap for thirty years and the dollar is in the toilet. When looking at huge transportation costs, training, language barriers and so on Boeing’s hourly workforce is a sensible bargain. Since employee turnover is almost non-existent the workforce is very experienced and professional.
Lastly, let me speak about unionization. I had assumed during this current labor dispute it would be the new people that had only a year or two at work that would be afraid to go out. Most of them only make about $14 dollars an hour, which doesn’t allow much for saving money. I spoke to one woman who said, “hey, you don’t understand, I have two kids and am a single mother I am at poverty level”. In addition there are other groups not used to being in unions; hyphenated-Americans from many places like Asia, I wondered how they would react. As it turned out it was these new people who were the angriest at Boeing’s machinations. Boeing has spent a great deal of time and money to change people’s “attitudes” at work. One recent program was called “Investment in Excellence”, designed by Lou Tice of the Pacific Institute. This program was for four days on the clock and it was designed to change the “attitudes” of people. Boeing is so concerned with this whole “attitude” thing that on the 787 they wanted all new, inexperienced people with new fresh outlooks who wouldn’t be poisoned with old-school ideas of people like me.
Of course that is another reason yet why the program is so mind-blowingly behind schedule. The point is Boeing took these new fresh minds, this new fresh clay, and in a very short time with the multiplier effect of out-of-touch management molded them into militant, angry, striking workers! Truly amazing.
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