Aug 26 2008
As another Boeing strike looms, I wonder: Does Boeing want the strike?
Washington has a plethora of industry, but there are two names that pretty much come to people’s minds when they think of the state: Boeing and Microsoft. I have worked for both, and while I have mentioned my high tech industry experiences, I don’t talk about Boeing much.
I hired on to the 777 plant in Everett in 1996, about a year and a half after I left the Air Force.
Prior to my hiring on, in 1995, I began to pay attention to Boeing. It was just prior to Christmas in 1995. I heard the stories and saw the TV reports. Christmas shopping at the Auburn Super Mall we drove past the picket lines.
I noticed something. Boeing had offered them a new contract at around 45 days and they were voting on it. A person labeled as a Union Officer came on TV expressing his optimism. The membership flatly rejected it. Shortly afterward, the same guy spoke on TV about how he had been pretty sure the Members would reject it.
I admit, I laughed. I figured if that was the kind of dufas they elected, oh well.
The strike went another 3 weeks or so finally ending at 69 days.
When I hired on in 1996, the veterans and old timers were still crowing about that strike.
I mentioned to one what I had noticed, and he nodded sagely, and told me a startling accusation: the union was in cahoots with Boeing management and the strike had been engineered deliberately.
NOTE: Obviously I need to add the disclaimer, this is not my theory, but that of a veteran employee.
So intrigued (hey it beat working) I asked him to explain. He claimed that Boeing as behind in planning and production on the 777, and rather then pay penalties for delays, they could take advantage of a 45 day extension on contracts that was allowed during - you guessed it - contract disputes.
So, he claimed that Boeing deliberately offered a crappy contract on day one, and forced the strike. Then, around day 45, when they lost the extension, they offered the real contract.
He cackled slyly at this point. here was his moment of pride: The union was wise to them, and stuck it to them by refusing it, and going on strike longer. He said it was a brilliant plan that gained them a much better contract, and showed them who was boss.
I didn’t take him all that seriously, at least not then. But then i heard essentially the same story from several other veterans.
Added to it was the shocking accusation that senior Union Officials were in on it the whole time.
Now as to that last line. the fact that I was told this prior to a Union election may have more to do with it than anything else. So I am not accusing the union of any chicanery.
In fact, I am not accusing Boeing either. I am merely recounting an interesting conspiracy theory since it seems to echo some interesting present events.
You see, the present climate is that the union is ready to strike, and coincidentally, Boeing is having some design issues on the new Dreamliner.
Coincidence? More than likely.
But as the news stories carried the story about the possibility of another strike, I had a flashback to those conversations. I can’t help but wonder:
And oddly, a quick Google Search found a few stories with other people making that claim this year and in years past, including these stories about 1995.1 I also found this strike FAQ from 1995 which mentions directly the “45 day Myth” but offers two different alternatives as to what it means: 2
Q. What about the 45-day “myth”?
A. It’s a concept often mentioned, but unconfirmed, by Boeing and union officials. One version says Boeing wanted a strike for at least 45 days, a point when penalty-clauses for late deliveries would be lifted. Another has it that the company wanted to settle in 45 days because that’s when penalties kicked in. There are other variations.
And just to be fair, I also found links accusing the Union itself of engineering the strikes to make sure the Union stayed prominent, and to keep Boeing defensive and other self serving accusations.
So how about it readers, can anyone confirm the sentiments or perhaps refute the accusations?
Let’s talk….
Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Virtuous Republic, Mark My Words, Rosemary’s Thoughts, A Blog For All, Right Truth, DragonLady’s World, Shadowscope, , The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Nuke’s, Pet’s Garden Blog, Allie is Wired, third world county, Political Byline, McCain Blogs, Woman Honor Thyself, , DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, , , The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, CORSARI D’ITALIA, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
10 Responses to “As another Boeing strike looms, I wonder: Does Boeing want the strike?”
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Yup. It’s not really worth a “cackle”-it’s common knowledge on the floor. Admittedly Anecdotal, and you ask senior management or the executives they’ll deny it to your face…but anyone who’s been on the Boeing Addiction long enough knows that when Corporate needs a breather to get something un-stuck, We go on strike. (Hey, it’s boeing-it’s either Strikes, or Layoffs. Strikes when they’re behind and need to catch up, Layoffs when we break production records while sales fails to break sales records.)
so, we’re going to be going on strike. Everyone knows it except those poor fools who believed the HR person when she said there’d be ten or more years of work.
When Boeing went on strike in the Fall of 1991 at Everett, one of my neighbours was out for 56 days. I had been on leave, hunting, so I gave he and his family a box of venison to help out. He was my neighbour, after all. But the thing that caught me was seeing the IAM/AW district president ensuring he was always on the evening news. KING-5, KOMO-4 and KIRO-7 always had this guy on whenever he opened his mouth. It didn’t matter what came out of it, he had to be seen on the news. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
I can neither confirm, nor deny any of the theories here.
Even so, I don’t like to see unions trying to blackmail a business into higher wages or more benefits by encouraging employees to refuse to work. Neither do I like to see businesses cynically plan for strikes as a way to avoid contract penalties for production delays.
Not having worked at Boeing, nor ever having been in a union may skew my perspective on this, but it seems to me that there’s duplicity on both sides. In any case, neither side ever comes out looking good to me.
NOBODY really wants a Strike, Perri, but in the case of Boeing, the equilibrium is such after eighty years that both sides know how to USE a strike so that we can get back to the real business-building airplanes.
Strikes tend to happen when the order curve is “Up”, and thanks to the complexity of the product, when it IS “up”, it usually curves well ahead of the supply curve-that is, the suppliers have a hard time retooling to handle increased demand, which causes problems, and those problems are usually easier to solve if the company is able to get a delay of some sort that doesn’t cost lots and lots of money.
There’s also the basic arm-wrestling (a natural condition with a healthy company that also has a healthy Union) between visions of how things ought to be run-that is, the company will try to maintain current standards or reduce them with regards to employee pay and benefits (lowering costs in the area that is easiest to lower them-the labour costs), sneaking in outsourcing (because eighties era business schools taught that this was a good idea, and it fits well with the post-GATT ‘72 “Wisdom” of industrializing the third world on the taxpayer’s dime while pretending that you’re not gutting the economy at home…), and other moves that are widely accepted in the white-collar world as a good idea. (Classifying most of your labour pool as “unskilled” labour-in spite of the requirement to train them intensively before they’ve got a chance in hell of being worth a shit on the floor).
contrasted with the Union’s requirement (via the membership, and the social contract there) to try to protect existing benefits and expand them whenever the opportunity presents itself (The Union is, at least in theory, answerable to the membership-just as the Company is in theory answerable to shareholders.)
“What about government?” someone might ask, “Don’t they make Labor laws?”
sure. and in theory, government enforces them. In practice, a hearing in the government’s hands will take months and thousands of dollars to set up, usually long after the damage is done, and even winning is a pyrrhic victory for any non-millionaire working from the Labour side. Government systems just don’t work very well-when they work at all, and regardless of which side of an NLRB you’re on, (except the Government side), you’re going to lose time, money, and many non-tangible things that can ruin a business if it’s small to medium sized, or result in a non-beneficial result if you’re talking about a single worker.
This is why Unions generally work best in large industrial settings-the Union has the resources (due to its large membership and the use of collective bargaining) to make side-deals, or to pay the right kind of law-firm to get a hearing in a serious case quickly, with far less delay, and far more efficiency than any lone-gunman worker from a non-union outfit-the trade, of course, is that it also serves as a kind of “Clearing House” which plays by mutually agreed upon rules of engagement in a dispute, and provides a “Common point of contact” with known adversaries on both sides-the Business Rep and the Company Rep are able to establish a working relationship that allows minor issues to be resolved without taking major actions, and major disputes to be handled without a corresponding major damage to either side.
The relationship between a Union and a large Corporation is, in other words, more complicated than the rhetoric on either side would lead one to believe. The Company gets something out of it that is of use, and the Union members get something out of it that is of use, the tension created is of use (by defining what limits and rules-of-engagement will be used), and both gain the ability to function without nanny-state government officials coming in and screwing things up to get headlines for the Political Party in Charge.
Hey ,Boeing better wake up fast, People are tired and fed up having thier jobs go out the door to subcontractors. Then the subcontractors screw it up and we fix it ! 787 is a great example, sections of the plane being delivered incomplete! Boeing mechanics pulled from other lines to play catch up > BOEING WAKE UP TO REALITY THERE IS GOING TO BE STRIKE AND YOU BETTER GET RID OF THAT SUBCONTRACTTING CLAUSE PERIOD ! NO MORE SUBCONTRACTING WILL BE TOLLERATED. YOUR SO SURE THAT YOUR FINAL OFFER WILL CINCH THE DEAL WELL GET READY FOR A LONG STRIKE AND WALK OUT. NOW AIRBUS CAN CATCH UP AND THERE WILL BE CANCELLATIONS BECAUSE CUSTOMERS ARE FED UP!
I work for Boeing in Portland. Boeing has said in as many words that no one will work on airplanes during this strike. So yes, it is an opportunity for suppliers to get ahead. Then again, let them try and get paid. I haven’t heard the conspiracy theory here, yet. Does anyone know what the managers on the production lines do during a strike? Yes, we know it’s hard to tell if some of them do much in the first place.
Well, Scott… Mine used to be a QA, he mentioned that during the last strike, managers were given cleaning and 5S tasks, because many customers outright told the company NOT to let the first lines and salaried people (or contractors) work on their aircraft.
this was after the ‘95 strike(sixty nine days), where management and a few Scabs tried to make a go of it, and lost Quantas as a customer for the next ten years….something about unsafe airframes, broken wire-bundles from untrained management hanging off them to make them stretch-to-fit, Skin Damage, structural damage, massive rework (caused by Hacks, temps, and the like)…tools left behind in sealed areas, Badly done shortcuts and LOTS of NCR’s, that sort of thing.
FAA issued millions in fines from that little adventure, or so I’ve heard, and the company almost lost its Production Certificate.
This time, it may well be that Boeing loses some customers due to still not having a flyable (and therefore, Flight-Testable) 787 by their stated deadline (Three strikes). That backlog in orders may very well go to Airbus as a direct result-after all, EADS has control of its supply lines and didn’t outsource them from order to delivery, EADS owns its own engineering and didn’t outsource THAT to outside companies (Partners), and EADS owns Dassault, which is the prime contractor for the Delmia, CATIA, and production paperwork software Boeing ‘cleverly’ purchased for the 787 programme. Notably, all of which are buggy as hell, and being virtual-only, rely on battery powered notebook computers that haven’t demonstrated much durability in actual USE. (something about electronics not reacting well to chemical fumes, dust, or impacts and vibration-things that are commonly associated with…oh…ah, yeah, actually BUILDING THE GODDAMN AIRCRAFT.)
It’s september, and XA-001 is not ready for flight test. it’s not even had all the parts delivered that were supposed to be pre-installed in the body sections, and it’s already had to undergo major surgery to correct structural defects caused by the hasty roll-out last year. The plane is supposed to be flight-test ready by mid september, according to McNerney’s statement to Wall Street.
Further issues include having to order/re-order parts through a subcontracto-er, Partner, who can’t seem to deliver on time, (New Breed), and idiocy like sending parts BACK to New Breed, (who send ‘em back to the original contractors) without addressing the problem that kept the part from being installed in the first place…because Boeing Engineers can’t write the fix without consulting with guys half-a-world-away who’re often not available, or don’t have the authority.
THE lesson of the 787 program, is that shirking responsibility to save a few tenths of a percent is gonna cost you when you need to deliver. Unfortunately, I do not believe the guys in Chicago are capable of understanding this lesson, much less absorbing it and learning from it. It’s a prime example of Executives driving for Mediocrity…
and maybe that’s the real point. They say “it’s standard in the Industry…” when they talk about their offer, just like they say similar things when talking about other examples of half-assery. Lowering to the level of the companies we already out-compete?
The Executives want to bring the company down, break it up, and sell it off in pieces. They do not believe in Excellence, and they project that slack-ass attitude on to US, assuming that the people who work on the machines, who make the product, are as half-assed, as perfidious, as Mendacious, as Narcissistic and as, frankly, Mediocre as themselves.
They assume a lack of an MBA means that someone doesn’t understand basic economic principles, that a lack of an Engineering Doctorate means that the work can be done properly by a half-trained burgerflipper with his brains baked out, They also assume we, like they, are out to loot, steal and pilfer. Why?
Because for all the talk about Ethics they generate, the truth is, they have none. We suspect their offers, because every offer from an unethical Cad SHOULD BE suspect. Boeing executives are the ones that practice Nepotism (McNerney once hired, and paid millions, for an accountant who couldn’t account, she just looked really hot in heels and could dechrome a trailer hitch with her tongue-after costing tens of millions in fines and errors, she was ‘let go’ with a three-million dollar separation bonus.)
Boeing Corporate Executives are the ones that violate Code of Conduct- and sometimes the Law. (CFO Mike Sears cost Boeing credibility with the USAF, along with a multibillion dollar contract AND fines in 2003/4 with the Tanker Lease Scandal-McCain only uncovered it. Sears is in jail, but the credibility and the reputation hit cost the company and continues to cost it.)
Boeing Corporate executives in Chicago violate the code of conduct: Stonecipher, and Condit both went under the SEC microscope for Stock-manipulation. Mulally used a golden-parachute escape plan to get out of an investigation into misconduct under his watch-he’s now wrecking the Ford company.
Sharevalue Trust: another example of “We can’t trust you”. At each payout date, Boeing Executives dump stock to temporarily lower the price and reduce the payout.
787: after the roll-out, Boeing stock peaked at over $120 a share. It would have been nice if they’d rolled out an airplane that was structurally and functionally an airplane, rather than a half-ass mockup that has spent the subsequent year being rebuilt, with attendant delays due to continuous lack of parts, fasteners, and other supplies needed to actually build the plane. This was an act of pure Perfidy, and while it’s neat to have so much interest in a new model, it’s also neat to be able to guarantee delivery to the customer BEFORE they start shopping for a replacement because you’re overdue for a first flight, and they need the planes NOW.
The damage to our company is going to last a VERY LONG TIME. It took Boeing seventy years to build up a reputation as the most reliable, trustworthy, highest value-for-the-purchase aircraft and manufacturer in the world. The last twelve years, our Executives have worked diligently to destroy and erode that reputation with a “Cheaper Now, Damn the consequences” attitude that drives to Mediocrity as a standard. Most of the old-timers (that is, those of us who remember when Excellence was important, and being the Leader of the Industry was a point of pride not only on the floor, but in the offices too) are still trying to uphold that-in spite of interference from the executive suites.
Most of the Conservatives who voted against this contract feel very much as I do-we voted it down from a sense of betrayal, and anger, and a strong sense that whatever promises the company makes must be, due to those in Chicago, something that can be enforced and not something that relies on matters of opinion or recommendation.
a ‘fixed’ COLA, for instance, may not be enough, or it might be too much, but it’s a hell of a lot more guaranteed than a promise of a bonus for performance from someone with a poor history of delivering such promises below the million-dollar-salary mark.
The insistence by the Company not to end LOU#37 in spite of the massive program delays it has been DIRECTLY responsible for (i.e. outsourcing to lowest-bidder entities that fail to deliver correct product on time on a reliable basis) shows that Chicago isn’t interested in building airplanes anymore. They’re interested in killing the company and selling off chunks of the corpse-that what is in charge of our company is the last gasp of the Corporate Raider mentality of the eighties that created the midwestern Rust-belt, and has driven the U.S. from a net producer of energy and goods, into a net consumer living off its savings and having to suck the dick of the Arab World to keep the lights on. These are the people that killed McDonnell Douglas as a viable entity, killed U.S. Steel, turned General Electric into a foreign-owned entity, and crippled Lockheed, Sunstrand, IBM, and Bear Stearns.
The men in Chicago have proven themselves unworthy of our trust, just as they proved themselves unworthy of the Air Force’s trust, and as they’re proving unworthy of Wall Street’s trust.
What they do not seem to get, is that their underhanded tactics during the vote, failure to deliver on assurances to customers, stock-manipulations, insider trading, unethical conduct, and bizarre misuse of company funds has eroded the soul of the company.
As one organizer put it during a rally in the 40-24 building last week, “The Boeing Family died with Frank Schrontz”-the reason is because the Boeing Leadership has turned on the company itself, and blamed the workers for their failures, for their being caught out and fined, for their losses due to waste and corruption.
In 2002, Boeing Executive Management asked the workers to trust them, to accept some concessions for the sake of the company. in the spirit of solidarity after 9/11, we did. The understanding at the time was that this was a temporary situation brought on by a weak market that was reeling.
What we’ve learned, is that there’s nothing Temporary about a Temporary Situation. In 2002, Boeing was posting losses. In 2008, boeing posted a pathetic 13 billion in profits-pathetic, because it paid out a billion just in fines, and would probably have been a far, far, larger profit if the 787 and 747-8 were actually hitting due-dates and making deliveries.
As it is, losing even 20% of those 800 pre-orders for the 787 could put the company billions into the debt column, instead of profits, and this is a much higher probability when the Executives refuse to address the things that are causing the delays, instead hoping to (and How, I don’t know-the entire manpower budget is four billion. fire everyone and you’re still going into debt) somehow paper over their mismanagement and unethical behaviour by cutting into the workforce budget at the sharp end.
UN-acceptable. WE accepted cuts in benefits even while Executives gave themselves raises and additional compensation, and gave their good buddies golden parachutes into the millions of dollars. NOT ONE executive passed on his bonuses in 2001, or 2002, when the company was reeling toward insolvent with massive order cancellations and an almost destroyed market.
If it’s good enough for the boys in Chicago, it’s good enough for the men and Women who build the product and make the thing that makes the money.
Well told, Cannonshop. I heard that the CEO of U.S. Steel once said, “We are not in the business of making steel, we are in the business of making money”.
I can’t cite a source for this quote, so it may be apocryphal. Either way, in our American economy, those words are simply, sadly left unsaid.
By the way, yesterday on the picket line, a Boeing lifer I asked dispassionately affirmed his belief in the hypothesis Karl heard that prompted him to start this discussion. I offer no opinion one way or another.
Yep. I have gotten several emails confirming the belief even if no one can confirm it in fact.
I think the real shame here is that the American worker is being taken for a ride here by one or both of the parties, and while they are on strike pay the execs and the union officials suffer not a bit and continue on full pay till they dangle a more acceptable carrot.
Meanwhile the disparity between skilled and unskilled labor in America increases everytime we go through this. The unions in seeking to promote their own welfare almost seem to be making the problem worse.
I don’t see the Unions promoting their own welfare as much the problem, as the Unions being single-party organs. Simply put, when you’re a guaranteed vote (even when the legislator works against your long term interests) you’re done. Cosmetic “Labor laws” don’t help when the same government that passes them is paying companies to move your job to the third world (GATT 1972 and every GATT treaty since), writing regulations that kill smaller competitors and make it economically non-viable to have a medium size business staffed by union workers (too many laws to count), and overcomplicated regulations written so that regulators can excercise power without responsibility (OSHA has a reg on how many grain-stripes per inch on a wooden ladder. The U.S. tax code alone has eighteen thousand pages…) or the need to excercise good judgement. Litigation is another problem-set, since practices believed safe forty years ago have become the new fad for lawsuits, as if smaller to medium sized outfits would have somehow magically known a substance was a carcinogen when the data on that substance hadn’t been compiled yet.
Add in the erosion of concepts of obligation and honour in our business schools, the obsessive focus on short-term profit over long-term stability, the fundamentals of which are a direct outcome, in my opinion, of the “Feels good-do it” movements of the sixties and seventies, (and the whole rejecting responsibilty thing encouraged in institutions of higher learning that produce these executives) and you’ve got a mess that extends WELL beyond the Unions… but I’ll allow the Unions did their part and do their part to make themselves more and more irrelevant on a steady basis.
For instance, having a Liberation Theology preacher give the benediction at the first strike sanction vote almost had me rejecting it, and affiliation with socialist and communist causes and operatives undermines both the purpose of organizing labour, and the outcomes, and further isolates your base from fully half the population of the U.S. if not more.
Which is a catastrophically stupid thing to do.