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Boeing workers vote to strike

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#31

Post by swarnie »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Boeing spent $43B on stock buybacks between 2013 and 2019 while paying their CEO ~$30M/year. > To support its share price, the company under McNerney poured billions into stock buybacks instead of investing profits into the kind of research and development needed to stay competitive. McNerney decided not to spend billions of dollars building a new plane to replace the 737. Instead, Boeing tweaked and updated the exis…

> Boeing spent $43B on stock buybacks between 2013 and 2019 while paying their CEO ~$30M/year.

Boeing share price was up almost 400% in that period. If the business goal was to maximise share price and therefore return for investors over that period it was a cracking success.

Since the US government will always pick up the pieces in the event of a failure its a minimal risk stratagy.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#32

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

NotACop182 wrote: post #22
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #20

[flagged]

Maybe had the company not prioritized greed and instead invested in itself they wouldn’t be in this mess. Don’t blame the workers for this and a company that depends so heavily on the government to keep it afloat shouldn’t be allowed to buyback stocks. Unions in a good place because Boeing isn’t going anywhere. Mismanagement allowed the greedy management to cash out already why not the workers.

I see this repeated often - blame placed entirely on management and not the workers. Why do you believe that? Do you honestly believe that they have not contributed at least partially to the decline of Boeing? That union protectionism has not affected productivity? That hostile bargaining and strikes hadn’t hurt their finances? Accusing the company of prioritizing greed and blaming the boogeyman of management sounds like a caricature, and not an unbiased perspective.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#33

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

hungie wrote: post #26
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #20

[flagged]

The labor involved is highly skilled, and has seen extensive underpayment. When Boeing tried to ship manufacturing away from union shops, the quality and reliability of the planes plummeted, driving up costs for the company. As a frequent flier, I'd much rather be in a union plane than a "cheapest labor we could find" plane.

[flagged]

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#34

Post by sofixa »

JackYoustra wrote: post #27
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Boeing spent $43B on stock buybacks between 2013 and 2019 while paying their CEO ~$30M/year. > To support its share price, the company under McNerney poured billions into stock buybacks instead of investing profits into the kind of research and development needed to stay competitive. McNerney decided not to spend billions of dollars building a new plane to replace the 737. Instead, Boeing tweaked and updated the exis…

It's kinda fun, right? The whole point of tying executive compensation to share price was to have them have some rough stake in the business, but even that didn't prove enough: there's always a longer term, and doing a visible, clear NPV boost is usually accretive to market cap even if it introduces long-term risk, because the long term risks are usually hidden from public eye and very mushy. Ironically, I think the…

> But at some level, it was just bad people making bad calls. I don't think McNerney thought that this would wreck Boeing, he was just wrong.

Well, he was stupid not to - there's no way he didn't know thay focusing on the short term stock price won't have negative effects on the quality and future of an engineering organisation whose main business, building and selling airplanes, is extremely capital intensive. He came from McDonnell Douglas who nearly bankrupted themselves doing the same sort of crap (pushing suppliers to the edge, cost cutting at every opportunity).

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#35

Post by sofixa »

IntelMiner wrote: post #4
hinkley wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They started new factories in new states to try to break the unions in Seattle.

Boeing fleeing Seattle while trying to cheerfully pretend they're a "Washington company" was absolutely disgraceful

They moved their HQ to Chicago and then DC to focus on government contracts (they suck at those too), so "Washington company" is extra funny.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#36

Post by trashtensor »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #32
NotACop182 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe had the company not prioritized greed and instead invested in itself they wouldn’t be in this mess. Don’t blame the workers for this and a company that depends so heavily on the government to keep it afloat shouldn’t be allowed to buyback stocks. Unions in a good place because Boeing isn’t going anywhere. Mismanagement allowed the greedy management to cash out already why not the workers.

I see this repeated often - blame placed entirely on management and not the workers. Why do you believe that? Do you honestly believe that they have not contributed at least partially to the decline of Boeing? That union protectionism has not affected productivity? That hostile bargaining and strikes hadn’t hurt their finances? Accusing the company of prioritizing greed and blaming the boogeyman of management sounds…

The top comment in this thread highlights the astonishing sums of money the shareholders were taking from the company. If you think the workers are to blame for the state of their finances you are either ignoring the facts or you are in here dishonestly trying to push a narrative.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#37

Post by beaglesss »

hungie wrote: post #29
beaglesss wrote: post #6

[flagged]

I don't think you understand who made the max and why it failed.

Sure it's failed from the floor workers because they forgot the plug door needs bolted. It's failed other ways due to the other (SPEEA) union botching the MCAS.

Sometimes it's easy to lose track of how basically all the Washington unions are so broken in their homicidal negligence while begging for more money to fail miserably.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#38

Post by zo1 »

calcifer wrote: post #12
ikawe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not an expert, but I’d like to know more. To me it’s interesting to know what the workers are concerned about specifically. Otherwise it just reads like “lots of people are mad”. Well about what exactly? It’s fine for a headline, but not very impressive reporting.

That much I agree with. I'd like to know more too, but I won't pretend it would be because I'd like to judge it for reasonableness :)

That's the whole point of journalism. Right now, they gave neither the facts that the GP wanted, nor the context and understanding that you may need to be comfortable enough to judge it's reasonableness within the context of the strike/industry/company.

It's like a BS meeting by a BS manager that he holds for "stakeholders" where he just throws a bunch of facts on the table, and then proceeds to do nothing to guide the decision making process. And then during the whole meeting we all run around like headless chickens trying to find out more info and context, all half-arguing with one another because we all have different pieces of the puzzle.

Sorry had one of these just yesterday, and no matter how delicately I phrased or insinuated-it the person with the most info/context just did not offer up guidance and direction (ironically it's the same person that organized the meeting). Then at the end they gave praise to all those that contributed and then said they'll schedule another meeting to discuss the outcomes because we "couldn't reach consensus" or "decide on the next course of action".

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#39

Post by sofixa »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #24
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Boeing spent $43B on stock buybacks between 2013 and 2019 while paying their CEO ~$30M/year. > To support its share price, the company under McNerney poured billions into stock buybacks instead of investing profits into the kind of research and development needed to stay competitive. McNerney decided not to spend billions of dollars building a new plane to replace the 737. Instead, Boeing tweaked and updated the exis…

Why is the CEO pay relevant? It is not even within an order of magnitude of the amounts needed to pay for even the contract Boeing proposed to the union, let alone the union’s demands. People complain about CEO pay as if paying them less would get them what they want. Frankly companies need CEOs, and people who are qualified for the job are very few in number. Whereas the line workers represented by the machinist uni…

CEO pay is relevant because Boeing haven't had a competent CEO in decades. Yet all of them were compensated handsomely for making pretty obviously bad choices (e.g. the 787 development was done McDonnell Douglas style, pushing most of the costs and risk to suppliers, and was highly problematic) or downright killing people through negligence.

> I am also not sure why the stock buybacks are worth mentioning

Because Boeing is a very capital intensive business that is currently in mountains of expensive debt, with multiple projects delayed with years, and a recovery time of 5 years minimum. The idiots in charge wasted billions on the wrong things, and now the company is a very bad situation.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#40

Post by sofixa »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #20

[flagged]

> That doesn’t seem very reasonable for jobs where the supply of labor is high compared to demand

Why would you think that's the case? Boeing's jobs pay barely above minimum wage for shitty work hours and long training in far away factories. They have a lack of thousands of mechanics, machinists, engineers, etc.

Also, the workers were screwed out last time there were negotiations because Boeing threatened to move production to non-union states. They're trying to partially compensate for that tol.

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