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Boeing workers vote to strike

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#81

Post by donatj »

darby_nine wrote: post #41
JackYoustra wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We all know boeing won't be "wrecked"; they're too critical for state interests to be allowed to fail. If they're smart they'll either nationalize the company to remove the profit inefficiency or force the company to split to remove the profit inefficiency. Either way, the profit motive and lack of any competition is clearly a national security risk.

> If they're smart they'll either nationalize the company to remove the profit inefficiency

So... remove the need to actually produce planes, or anything at all for that matter, subsidize their continued failures?

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#83

Post by beaglesss »

nullindividual wrote: post #72
beaglesss wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The golden age of flight had not only competition of manufacture, but competition from consumers and purchasers on risk appetite. It could not emerge under an FAA as we know it. To come anywhere near that you'd need to break up the FAA, as it has a virtual monopoly on violence in enforcing the CFRs here. Let people pick which, if any enforcer they want certifying their airplanes. That is, the FAA suffers from the sam…

The golden age of flight splattered the blood of professionals and innocents alike to write those regulations. Flight is not for cowboys.

You can't count all the dead from flight being held back FAA. It's similar with housing regulations -- the code inspector sees dead in a house but not the 10 homeless people he killed by making housing less accessible.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#84

Post by csomar »

Y-bar wrote: post #74
DevX101 wrote: post #18

Defeat for the company or defeat for shareholders? These things are not the same.

Depends on if you are a shareholder for the long terms (many years) or a short-term trader. I don't own stock in Boeing (or any of their main competitors), but when there is a strike like this in a company I hold stock in I generally get more bullish for the long term because it means that: 1. It signals employees still care about the company enough to not just quit and go elsewhere. And employees who care make a bet…

[dead]

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#85

Post by cced »

swarnie wrote: post #31
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.

Can someone explain to me the theory of stock buybacks? How is this not just financial engineering? How are you meant to differentiate companies who’s stock goes up because they’ve been productive and made great products from those that increase their stock prices using buybacks? Are there rules against taking out loans and using them to perform stock buybacks?

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#86

Post by iancmceachern »

Any Boeing engineers who may be looking for alternate paths, please know that I've known many great aerospace engineers who have made a pivot to medical devices very successfully and many of the best medical devices to come out in recent years are due to such. It seems very different but really it's very similar.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#87

Post by lucianbr »

OxO4 wrote: post #58
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Often, people try justify high pay for management positions by pointing out the responsibilities that comes with such a position. If that's the case, then it only makes sense to place blame on management when things go sideways. If not, then what exactly is the value that management adds to the company that justifies their high pay?

There's never an answer to this question. People say management is not at fault, and when this is pointed out to them... crickets.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#88

Post by beaglesss »

nottorp wrote: post #78
beaglesss wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have to break up the FAA first. The certification costs are ungodly, rigid, and the certification process created fascistic interweaving of industry with government. To break the monopoly, counterintuitively, we have to deregulate Boeing.

The FAA broke itself up already. They allowed Boeing to self certify.

Seems Boeing effectively became part of the FAA. I've produced and designed experimental aircraft. The FAA made it clear they would not certify it, simply wasn't legal since it wasn't contemplated under any certifiable title in the CFRs other than experimental.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#89

Post by [deleted] »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #71
ncallaway wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I’m sure that was the union’s fault, and not pressure from management to work quickly, cut corners, and akip on quality. Honestly, anyone blaming unions for Boeings quality problems are not someone that anyone should listen to or take seriously when it comes to quality.

>Yeah I’m sure that was the union’s fault, and not pressure from management to work quickly, cut corners, and akip on quality. The union's job is to fight back against those poor choices from management that negatively impact the workforce and the product delivery. Otherwise what's the point of the union? What value are they adding to the workers if they end up with the same issues as non union labor?

[deleted]

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#90

Post by photonthug »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #68
JackYoustra wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then blame the board imo. They define the objectives for the CEO, the incentives for achieving them, and the governance framework for governing their execution. If shareholders want this “short term thinking” that always gets brought up, then they have every right to it. Of course this “short term thinking” trope is just a meme that the armchair commentators like to pedal out. If the system was dysfunctional enough t…

> If the system was dysfunctional enough to prioritise short term profit seeking to this extent, then all a competitor would have to do to monopolise any market is do enough “long term thinking” to outlast all their failing competitors.

This makes it sound like my broker, the finance community in general, or maybe the state is better able to handle long term thinking than our industry leaders, but why would anyone believe that? Aren’t they all looking quarter to quarter and retiring next year no matter how bad they wreck the company/economy/country?

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