Wouldn't it be great if Inslee were discretely having discussions with Airbus about the talent we have here?

The machinists aren't the source of Boeing profits. The sale of airplanes to customers who believe them to be a good investment is the source of Boeing profits.

And the reason customers believe them a good investment? That would be good management of resources creating among the best airframes in the world, despite whiny lazy union goldbrickers.

@2 So you're saying that labor doesn't actually create wealth?

@2...

Neoliberal asshole.

Seattleblues can't handle the truth, which is that without employees, businesses are NOTHING. His included.

You really did not build that. Labor did.

The best thing for this region would be if Boeing and Microsoft picked up and relocated to Mumbai and Shanghai.

Are we ignoring the role the Democratic politicians played in the whole shenanigans, publicly interfering with the union vote and giving Boeing all these tax breaks. It takes two to tango.

@2, some customers insisted that their 787 airplanes were to be made in Everett, only.

You have no idea of what you are talking about, none.

@11...yeah, fuckwad, the Republicans were (are/would be/will be) better.

Grow up.

A newspaper telling people to shut up is just offensive.

Take away the Seattle Times tax break.

Yeah. the brain surgeons at Boeing:

The Dreamliner was supposed to become famous for its revolutionary design. Instead, it’s become an object lesson in how not to build an airplane.

To understand why, you need to go back to 1997, when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas. Technically, Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas. But, as Richard Aboulafia, a noted industry analyst with the Teal Group, told me, “McDonnell Douglas in effect acquired Boeing with Boeing’s money.” McDonnell Douglas executives became key players in the new company, and the McDonnell Douglas culture, averse to risk and obsessed with cost-cutting, weakened Boeing’s historical commitment to making big investments in new products. Aboulafia says, “After the merger, there was a real battle over the future of the company, between the engineers and the finance and sales guys.” The nerds may have been running the show in Silicon Valley, but at Boeing they were increasingly marginalized by the bean counters.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/…

@15: Fascinating. Thanks for that link.

#15

There has been one and only one major problem with the 787.

Batteries.

@13 You, fuckwad, miss my point.

Your elected Democratic governors, state legislators, including the newly elected Seattle mayor, all played a huge role in this. Claiming that you're a fucking progressive while electing these anti-worker asshats into office is delusional at best, but it's far more likely that you're a fucking hypocrite.

Grow up indeed.

@18...

Clearly the Dems caved...they're catching shit for it. But last time I looked, Republicans wanted to make Washington another "right-to-work" state, and they have even more nefarious plans in the works...is that what you want? Get out and work for more public participation, better Democrats (or Republicans...good luck...), public financing of political campaigns and limits on who can lobby and how much they can spend if you want change. But all you want to do is bitch.

Your cynical asshole schtick gets nobody anywhere.

@17 You know that's not true. Boeing is spending millions having Everett workers fix Charlotte's mistakes. Meanwhile, much of the reason the 787 was so late was due to the inability of outsourced contractors to produce parts on time and at quality standards. The program has been a manufacturing disaster thanks to Boeing's efforts to do it on the cheap.

I think the bigger point of a news paper talking down to the people of the region is incredibly offensive, if not surprising.

I don't think the hardball way to solve this is making inquiries to airbus, its spinning off the talented workforce into a new industry. That's how this region became the aerospace region, no?

They have a fascinating exhibit at the MOHAI, Boeing was so successful in WA because of the death of the ship building industry. The surplus of out of work ship builders moved right into the production of light weight wood planes during WW2. Now, the infrastructure has stayed the same but the company has left. Sounds like a new aerospace industry is nascent. And what is the hottest selling aircraft in the world these days? It's not passenger planes. It's drones.

The crazy part is that the concessions from the machinists will have a very minor benefit to Boeing's bottom line. Machinist labor was reported to account for ~15% of a plane's total cost. When you compare that benefit to the risks associated with moving production, it doesn't make sense to seriously consider it. It appears the desire for concessions was personal to me.

It's a negotiation. That's what collective bargaining is. Sometimes the union has the upper hand; sometimes the company does. In this case Boeing had all the cards (to mix metaphors).

I would expect Boeing to extract every concession it can from the union. And in the future, when the union is in a stronger position, it will do the same. If you believe in collective bargaining and vote to unionize you should understand that going in.

@19 Your two party schtick is insulting. All you want to do is re-elect the same asshats that have been selling Washington for the past 20 years. Try backing something other than Democrats for a change (and I'm not talking about Republicans).

@23 The thing about collective bargaining (in fact, any bargaining) is that it doesn't have to be adversarial. A healthy workplace is one where management and labor work together toward a mutual goal. But you don't achieve that by disrespecting and humiliating workers the way Boeing did, just because, you know, they could.

Boeing may have shaved a little from their labor costs. But they lost a lot of good will in the process, and that can't possibly help workplace productivity.

@2:

Here's some Economics 101 for your edification:

No workers to build the airplanes, no airplanes to sell. No airplanes to sell, no profit for the company.

Seriously, it's so simple even a child could understand these very basic concepts.

So, what's your excuse?

#20

Sounds like Boeing screwed itself in Charleston by devaluing skilled work even more!

First, beginning last spring, Boeing let go most of Charleston’s temporary contract hires — experienced aviation workers hired from all over the U.S. to get the program up and running, many of them working as quality inspectors.

http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstec…

Still those are performance problems due to load on the assembly line. Not an inherent structural problem with the 787 itself. Again, I know of no other problem but the battery where an inherent design flaw hobbled the plane.

@25:

Which makes the whole Tennessee VW unionization vote such a debacle. VW WANTS good relations with its U.S. employees, it WANTS them to be part of the decision-making process, because VW management has learned through long experience that this results in a better, more productive workforce. But, the right-leaning politicians in most southern states are so terrified over the prospect of workers actually having some say in what goes on in their own workplace, they're willing - and apparently quite able - to shoot themselves in both feet in order to maintain that status quo.

I guess Plantationism still runs deep down there...

@2: It sure is too bad they don't have non-union plants in a state like South Carolina who would be much harder workers and more competent because they're not propped up by a union. Then they could fix the fuckups of our lazy ass union workers.

Wait, what's that? That's exactly the OPPOSITE of how it went? But that would mean your lazy stereotyping of unionized workers was wrong, and they actually deserve their good pay... That can't be right...

#28 (and the rest of you)

Here's what I love about Libpacrasy.

Isn't the typical Boeing worker - the one who wants a 5 bedroom house in Snohomish, two duellie pickups, a Suburban, a '68 GTO and Skidoo -- the guy who you lambast night and day, isn't he the environmental nightmare that plagues your dream of 84 sqft apodment hosted bicyclists living 150 stories high, descending only to knosh on street food and join the daily Sawant protest rally? Now all of a sudden you want to fuel his gluttony with even fatter paychecks (so long as it ends up in the treasury budget for Demopublican Centrist infrastructure).

@29:

Then evidentally, you haven't been close paying attention.

You are correct on one point: outsourcing per se wasn't the problem; Boeing has used subcontractors for decades. The problem was in HOW they utilized and managed (or more accurately MISSmanaged) their outsourcing process, as the article makes clear.

@32:

Nice Straw Man you got there, need a match?

@29, they underperformed after a buildup. Now, they need the temporary workers to overcome performance issues that didn't magically go away when Boeing purchased Vogt.

The incomplete sections are not coming from the newer final assembly building.

#34

Do you not understand the difference between the design itself and the way they assemble the design..what is called the design process?

But lets continue. What Boeing did is use supply chain management, a very standard thing in today's world. It's not outsourcing either -- where a company takes a very routine function and sends it to a low cost provider. This is high end work where both the brains and brawn is left up the the subcontract.

And according to the article they let individual subcontractors both build...and design...so sometimes parts didn't match up. That is not an inherent design problem, but a communications (and quality) problem. Bottom line, this is a way of building things that probably will not change until we create 3D printers large enough to assembly an airliner. And who knows, that day may soon be upon us!

And truth be told, if you are talking about the design process and geographically shrinking the radius of the supply chain, then honestly it would not fall inside of Washington State's boundaries as well do not build or make any of the critical components here. We don't make engines, wings or fuselages. We are more like model airplane builders, people who get a box fuel of plastic parts and some glue (and even then the big pieces are already assembled) and put it together and spray paint it.

@39 because exec pay and dividends?

@10 by definition, in a capitalist system labor always receives less than the value the add since owners who contribute nothing extract profit from the fruits of the labor

And since you asked, proportionally, union workers will take home less of their production value through the life of this contract given that boeing's profits are forecasted to rise 5% annually, while union pay gets a 1% boost every other year. If these predictions hold that amounts to over 70% growth in boeing's profits and 6% growth in union pay after 10 years.

@24 thank you. Fuck these dems!

@41 we're not talking about the auto workers, dipshit. Also Boeing currently runs a 20% profit margin (that's a lot). So this has nothing to do with any kind of fiscal needs for Boeing to stay viable and everthing to do with further expanding profits, exec pay, and dividends.

@44 and then they started selling shitty cars that couldn't compete with the Japanese. But hey, go ahead and keep blaming the workers because, capitalism....

Don't tell us, doomie, it's the Queen, right?

@46 of course boeing needs to cut those prndions, because dipping into the 20% profit margin even one bit to adaquately fund pension obligations would be completely out of the question. Pull your fucking head out. Corporate profits and exec pay are at an all time high. When those go down i'll finally believe that workers really need a hair cut to save their company.

Umm... Prndions = pensions. (And where the hell is spellcheck when I actually need it?!?)

The bottom line here, folks, is that Boeing is making record profits and so are its executives. It's simple. Does Boeing really want to be leading this race to the bottom, where workers have no pensions and their rights are slowly, gradually eroded? That's what they're doing. They're big enough to control the market and they should be leaders in how they compensate their employees. Pensions, good wages and decent working conditions should be the rule, not the exception.