Boeing 777X setback after union vote

reply to post by Sammamishman


Good for them. Throw the leadership out and replace it with something more in touch with the union.

Zaphod58
reply to post by schuyler

 

It is a setback, because instead of being able to use their already built facilities they're going to have to find a new place, build a new facility which is going to cost potentially billions, and it can potentially impact the time frame for the aircraft being built.

Not really, Zaph. The current production lines are full, including the 737 at Renton, which has expanded production recently and is producing 737s at a break-neck pace, and various models including the K-46A tanker at Everett. (There's also the South Carolina site.) They're going to need more facilities anyway, and there are some dandy places which would like them, including the under-used facilities in Long Beach. States are bending over backwards to lure Boeing with incentives. It's a buyers market and I doubt they will have much trouble finding an adequate location.

Boeing has learned a lot since the 1970's when Seattle was a one-horse town and Boeing nearly bought the farm by over-estimating demand for the 747. They put Seattle on notice several years ago by moving their corporate headquarters to Chicago, so this marriage is essentially over. I'm not 100% happy with all their decisions. Many of my relatives and friends have worked for the Lazy-B over the years I have lived here. But I understand their need to cut reliance on a single population, particularly the full-of-themselves, never-satisfied machinists. For them to plead poverty in light of their real wages which, including overtime, put them close enough to the 1%ers to spit at, does not engender much sympathy around here, where most of the population makes half what a machinist does if they are lucky and would die to have a steady job like that.

reply to post by schuyler


If they stay in Washington, they can slot in nicely with the current 777 line. It would be a lot cheaper to expand the current line than it would be to build an entirely new facility from scratch. Even if they go with Long Beach, they're going to have to overhaul the C-17 line completely, as the production for the 777 is completely different. So even that facility is going to require a huge overhaul. No matter where they go, outside Everett is going to cost them a huge amount.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Let's just see what happens and then we can take it up again. The first cut of sites is imminent, so we'll be able to see what is left over.

News today that N.C. and Pennsylvania have been eliminated from Boeing's short list of possible 777x sites:

www.thenewstribune.com...

Sammamishman
News today that N.C. and Pennsylvania have been eliminated from Boeing's short list of possible 777x sites:

www.thenewstribune.com...

I saw that, too. There were, IIRC, 57 sites total on the table.

Of all the boeing plants at Seattle, Renton is my favorite...is Payne field going to change because of this ?
I don't like the way the new owner's pilots take the 777's outta there, it's too scary. ( they're afraid to push the gas, I swear ).....
ETA....the wing-dip on departure should be outlawed....

GBP/JPY
Of all the boeing plants at Seattle, Renton is my favorite...is Payne field going to change because of this ?

I don't like the way the new owner's pilots take the 777's outta there, it's too scary. ( they're afraid to push the gas, I swear ).....
ETA....the wing-dip on departure should be outlawed....

As I understand it, Everett (It's "Paine" Field) is considered a viable alternative given its current infrastructure and the tax incentives already in place. All it needs is a "Wing Building" which the local county, Snohomish, is willing to finance and build, then lease it back to Boeing. The site already has great transportation support including a rail line right to the plant, and I-5 within a few blocks.

I was slightly off above. Boeing has received 54 site bids from 22 states so far.

Employers take advantage of workers, unions take advantage of both.

Many unions are similar to the useless town hall councils in the UK, run by those that shout the loudest and rely upon the indifference of the Sheeple to maintain office.

When it comes to greed there is little difference between the Barons of industry and the self crowned dinosaurs of the unions. Without the Sheeple however none of them have any power whatsoever. If only the Sheeple were awake...

The unions screwed up the UK as a manufacturing based country and the resultant mess is now relying on foreign owned business to survive, steel manufacturing, car production, you name it, we don't produce it we even import our trains FFS!

reply to post by Shuftystick


The issue here is: Who is going to build the plane? The national union has overruled the local union leadership and is forcing another election. As usual, the opera ain't over 'til the fat lady sings.

reply to post by schuyler


So the efforts by the Union members calling for a vote have paid off and the National union leaders have stated that the union members will get the chance to re-vote on Jan. 3rd. The local union leaders are urging another no vote (probably not to loose face after the national leaders smacked them down).

I think Boeing wants to build the 777x in Everett. It would be the most cost effective for the company both in efficiently and infrastructure. I think this is the last time the union will get a crack at it, if they vote no again it won't be coming to WA.

www.komonews.com...

reply to post by schuyler

I was a trades Union member for the majority of my working life and even held local office at times. Always stood up for the membership, supported managements right to manage but never to manage badly!
Experience over 40 years, local officials still tend to represent the membership usually due to altruistic values, but the further up the greasy pole then the more they distance themselves from the workfare and reality. At National/Group level and especially within the UK TUC, personal greed and politics along with decades of prejudice take over.
Good employers are very hard to find in this day and age, whilst the evangelical zeal of the PC brigade, Common Purpose or Pacesetter clones continue to brainwash the oppressed Sheeple. Happy workers have always been more productive workers, that is a fact. The average worker today, be they in a call centre "sweatshop" or somebody's mega distribution warehouse is likely to be on subsistence wages and nil hours contract. Fine if you want to lessen your overheads, but the bottom line is that profitability depends on output - it's a no-brainier, that's why those with no brains are in charge! ROFL...
The revolution would be if the dozy sods woke up and realised there always have been better ways to run a business without acting as a megalomaniac.

reply to post by Shuftystick


Whatever. You're all about unions and why unions are good. Fine. As I understand in this case, union workers had to circumvent local leadership and go to a national level to force a vote of the local membership. That tends to fly in the face of the idea that the national level is out of touch.

The two biggest issues are pensions and health care. The workers now get a cadillac medical plan with everything covered for themselves and their families at no charge to themselves at all. Boeing wants workers to take on a portion of these costs. Second, the pension as now a "defined contribution" pension. That means that the employer puts in a set amount, and at retirement the employee receives a set amount, period. That means that no matter what the market conditions are, the employer must pay out that set amount. They want to change this to a 401-K type plan where the employee manages his own pension as he sees fit. The union doesn't want that.

From my point of view all that plus $33 an hour is a pretty good gig. If you add the cost of pay and benefits each worker is approaching $100K per year in cost to the company (which has to pay industrial insurance, unemployment insurance, medical, pension, and a host of other mandated costs per employee). I've never made anything anywhere close to $33 an hour, plus overtime, plus a Cadillac benefit plan that covered my whole family, plus work place "protections" that mean they can't fire you for shuffling. I never will. That's why they call it "The Lazy-B."

But I see the benefit to the local economy because I was here last time Boeing consolidated and went from 120,000 employees to 30,000 employees in 18 months. It wasn't just those Boeing employees who lost their jobs. So did I and all my friends. As Boeing goes, so goes the local economy.

So I have a vested interest in getting that plane built here. It affects my property values. It affects my quality of life. And here I see a bunch of Boeing employees who want so much that they would be willing to be laid off and have the plane built elsewhere rather than sign off on what are really some very modest issues. Think about that for a minute. You would rather be fired than work at a job that pays far above average?

And this is what unions do. They will always choose to have their less senior people laid off in favor of grabbing more for their most senior people. This is how they treat their brother union members. They don't really care if their less senior people get laid off. Tough for them, as long as those who have been around the longest get to keep their jobs.

It's this kind of arrogant attitude that is going to result in several tens of thousands of jobs going away permanently. It is what has caused company after company to go belly up in this country, or to send jobs overseas, thus strengthening countries like China.

And of these guys do vote this offer down, again, then the plane will NOT be built here, and all these "machinists" who are, in fact, assembly line workers, will be out looking for jobs with no more relevant skills that your average English major applying for jobs at McDonald's for minimum wage. That will put a lot of pressure on the low end of the economy as well, and we'll all suffer because a few union employees didn't like their $33 an hour jobs well enough to keep them. They are willing to take all the rest of us down with them.

Unless I have written badly I trust that what is writ did not give the impression that I am all for the unions, I am not and never was. I was however prepared to stand up to the mark and represent those that were less able to look after themselves or stand up,to management bullying, of which I saw plenty.
I was working throughout the UK over my career and have seen the outcomes of Scargill and the Miners Strike (Thatcher & her advisors read him like a book) and Scargill screwed the miners totally. I have also seen the devastating effects of the run down of the UK steel industry and it's associated support infrastructure. Hand in hand with the car manufacturing closures added to the the demise of the UK merchant fleet and the now rare sighting of the "Red Duster" and I am hardly pro-union throughout.
Union practices led to a lot of lost jobs here, without the pressure from some appalling management practices the average worker was totally screwed.
Hard earned pension funds have been quietly emptied whilst mismanagement of fund investments was endemic.
Good unions focused on the welfare of their members are as rare to find as good employers these days. One of the UK's largest public unions invested over £10m funds in new headquarters in London at a time when it's membership was losing tens of thousands of jobs or where still in work suffering terrible conditions and nil pay rises over successive years.

Your attitude is noted. The only thing that matters now is that the plane is built here. That's in the union's hands. It sucks that what they do affects the rest of us, but that's the way it is. It's easy to proclaim what justice is if you don't really have a dog in the fight. Yow won't really be affected no matter which way it goes.

......Well, Ralph Nader has decided to jump into this quagmire, and on top of that things are just getting stickier as described in the KOMO4 news report video:

www.komonews.com...

This just came out in the Bremerton Sun, the local newspaper. The vote is tomorrow.

Some machinists in the Puget Sound region would likely see their annual base salaries top $100,000 in the coming years under a proposed contract offer from Boeing Co., according to an Associated Press analysis of the deal.

A group of top-level union workers at Boeing already earn more than $90,000 in base pay annually, not counting shift differentials, overtime or incentive payments, according to union wage tables. While the contract offer going to a vote Friday would slow the growth of machinists' wages starting in 2016, workers would still get regular cost-of-living adjustments, plus an extra 1 percent pay increase every other year.

Over the past decade, machinists received an average cost-of-living increase of about $600 per year, with the amount calculated based on federal government data. If that continues in the future, the base pay for about 400 machinists in Washington state, such as optical instrumentation technicians, would surpass six figures in 2020. More would exceed the $100,000 mark in 2023.

By 2020, experienced workers in the most common class of machinists, which includes mechanics and electricians, would earn about $82,000, up from about $73,000 today. Overtime and incentive pay can add thousands more to their earnings.

Salaries among machinists can vary widely, with 11 different pay grades depending on job categories. New hires can also make a lot less than their peers, but they typically jump to the maximum salary for their class within six years. Boeing had sought to slow how fast workers climb the pay scale in an initial contract proposal but has backed away from that effort in the company's latest offer.

Read more: www.kitsapsun.com... This will probably be behind a paywall by the time you get to it. I DID NOT quote the entire article in keeping with ATS fair use guidelines.

Vote results should be available by 9:00pm PST tonight.

I think small focused Unions, Businesses and Governments all do well since everyone is on a personal level and all are working for the common good with the least waste. As all of these grow so does the cost and waste and more importantly the objectives.

Big unions kill businesses and workers while not out to help the common guy at all, but make all their decisions to get money and power. Same thing can be said for big business and Government. I work for Boeing in a non-union area and I do really well, so unions have no effect on me in either the positive or negative way.

The biggest wrong out there though is unions in Government...that should be illegal...

So it looks like the 777x is staying in WA. Machinist union members OK the new contract offer:

"Tonight, Washington state secured its future as the aerospace capital of the world," Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said late Friday night.

Boeing quickly hailed the eight-year contract extension, affirming that under its terms, the 777X and its composite wing will be built in the Puget Sound area by Boeing employees represented by the Machinists union.

www.komonews.com...