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Boeing workers vote to strike

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#91

Post by immibis »

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…

Long term thinking is often incompatible with short term thinking. It doesn't matter if your company is long term sustainable if it's short term unsustainable. See dumping.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#92

Post by immibis »

csomar wrote: post #84
Y-bar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

How do you measure a company's "health"?

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#93

Post by immibis »

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…

Who selects the workers? Whose incompetence is it if incompetent workers keep getting selected?

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#94

Post by immibis »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #25
calcifer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe the union demands are reasonable, or maybe they're not. Give me specifics please! Would that really help, though? Do you have the industry know-how, expertise, and internal knowledge to assess whether the offer is reasonable or not?

Does it matter? These puff pieces exist solely to influence public opinion. That's true whether I have internal knowledge or not! We live in an era where a lot of media types actively push pro-unionization ideas. It'd be helpful to present facts and details alongside union efforts! I personally assume that if details are withheld it's because they'd be damaging to their argument. YMMV.

This is true but the media is usually anti-union, because, you know, shareholders vote for who has editorial control.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#95

Post by notrealyme123 »

csomar wrote: post #84
Y-bar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Such a black and white view of things.

But for simplicity, remind me again who does the work, and who cheaps out on plane parts to drive up revenue?

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#96

Post by bombcar »

darby_nine wrote: post #75
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We all know boeing won't be "wrecked"; they're too critical for state interests to be allowed to fail People keep repeating this without context. The auto companies are strategically significant. That didn't prevent them from going bankrupt [1][2]. Wiping shareholders doesn't mean blowing up the factories. I'm increasingly convinced Boeing needs to go bankrupt. It can then shed unprofitable units--through spin-offs…

> The auto companies are strategically significant. Not really, they're more politically significant than economically critical. I've certainly never owned an american car and never plan to. We'll be fine continuing to rely on foreign companies to produce our vehicles. Foreigners certainly don't want our cars (outside of maybe tesla in the nordics, i guess?). None of this is true for the plane market, or at least not…

The auto companies are strategically significant because war footing America will turn those F150 lines into tank lines in a matter of months instead of the years it would take to spin them up from scratch.

IBM made machine guns on typewriter lines in WW2.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#98

Post by jajko »

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.

Some car manufacturers are definitely not critical to national security, they just employ tons of folks in few places. Company making weapons like choppers, planes etc for whole US military is on completely different level of importance.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#99

Post by bombcar »

cced wrote: post #85
swarnie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Stock buybacks are mathematically identical to dividends if you work it out.

And yes, people track that, and yes taking loans to pay dividends is a favorite trick of dying companies.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#100

Post by photonthug »

csomar wrote: post #84
Y-bar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

> There are very few good stories with unions but most of them are tragic especially long-term.

Since unions helped to end practices like child labor and what amounted to indentured service, I’m not sure you know what “tragic” or “long term” means.

If what you mean is more like “what have they done for us lately”, you should probably just say it and start that conversation instead

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