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Boeing workers vote to strike

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#171

Post by Dennip »

jmyeet wrote: post #133
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 I am very sympathetic to this line of criticism but I also find that "stock buybacks" are misunderstood and, as a result, overly demonized. So I just want to explain a few things for anyone who reads this. The question with a corporation is what to do with surplus profits. The first iteration of this was to pay dividends. These legally are paid equally among shareholders. If you…

My understanding of stating this figure was to highlight that the cash to pay employees reasonably exists, its just being spent elsewhere...

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#172

Post by mnau »

immibis wrote: post #93
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…

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

Competence or incompetence is not really relevant. Company as big as Boing gets employees on a bell curve, just like everyone else.

They get average people in a profession and from there, it's on management.

It's management job to put into place system to make employees competent (i.e. trained to efficiently to do the tasks required with a certain quality) and weed out the ones who can't deliver.

There will always be individual failures, but anything over low single digit percentage is a systematic problem = management fault.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#173

Post by meiraleal »

GuB-42 wrote: post #161
fragmede wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen how much lambasting Boom Aerospace gets every time they come up? Starting a new aerospace company isn't for the faint of heart!

Well, Boom is not any aerospace company, they want to make supersonic planes. Supersonic travel is expensive and environmentally unfriendly, and it will probably always be, because it requires more energy, because physics. All that for the minor advantage of saving a couple of hours on select flights. What it means is that it is a privilege for the wealthy (because it is expensive for what you get), at the expense of…

Computers used to be very, very expensive. Residential telephone lines were acquired through mortgage a couple decades ago in my country so being expensive now doesn't mean expensive forever.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#174

Post by AlexandrB »

beaned wrote: post #167
GuB-42 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Boom is not any aerospace company, they want to make supersonic planes. Supersonic travel is expensive and environmentally unfriendly, and it will probably always be, because it requires more energy, because physics. All that for the minor advantage of saving a couple of hours on select flights. What it means is that it is a privilege for the wealthy (because it is expensive for what you get), at the expense of…

I think that take is a little cynical. If it's only for the rich then the prices will be high. Meaning the capitalist mechanism of resource distribution will be even higher (more paid by the rich received as income by the non-rich). It will also take demand from existing airlines making fares lighter for everyone else. It also employs people. It also drives technology forward. And ultimately it does let people travel…

> It will also take demand from existing airlines making fares lighter for everyone else.

That's not how airline economics work. The first class passengers (the ones who could afford to leave for supersonic) subsidize the economy seats[1]. If they left you would probably see worse prices, worse amenities or both.

There are airlines that don't have business or first class seats (e.g. Spirit), and they're generally a terrible experience.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-class-vs-coach-a-game-of-...

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#175

Post by ghaff »

radu_floricica wrote: post #138
photonthug wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

That's taking something that happened about a century ago and using it as an argument for the current situation. If you're looking for something much closer to home, look at how in the past half century unionized corporations were forced to take over pensions, and how they're doing now because of this. Pensions are a financial product, which should be paid for by each employee - quite likely with supervision and safe…

The alternative view is that, left to themselves, people don't save enough for retirement and, for better or worse, social security in the US really isn't enough for a comfortable retirement.

That said, there are a lot of reasons why traditional defined benefit pensions aren't a good match for a lot of jobs today. I have one (for a non-union job) but it's mostly a positive because I'm sure I never gave it a second thought early career when I was earning into it.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#176

Post by JKCalhoun »

photonthug wrote: post #100
csomar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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

IDK, perhaps OP believes child labor laws were bad for shareholders and the companies long term?

That underscores the point for me though — the company and shareholders both take a back seat to the well-being of "the rest of us".

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#177

Post by SecretDreams »

iancmceachern wrote: post #86

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.

Conversely, I've seen a lot pivot from aero to auto and flounder. They are kind of opposite industries in terms of pacing and design compromises, as well as the fact that most of a car has to plasticize in crash events which is not a primary consideration in aero.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#178

Post by tmhrtly »

beaned wrote: post #167
GuB-42 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Boom is not any aerospace company, they want to make supersonic planes. Supersonic travel is expensive and environmentally unfriendly, and it will probably always be, because it requires more energy, because physics. All that for the minor advantage of saving a couple of hours on select flights. What it means is that it is a privilege for the wealthy (because it is expensive for what you get), at the expense of…

I think that take is a little cynical. If it's only for the rich then the prices will be high. Meaning the capitalist mechanism of resource distribution will be even higher (more paid by the rich received as income by the non-rich). It will also take demand from existing airlines making fares lighter for everyone else. It also employs people. It also drives technology forward. And ultimately it does let people travel…

Not fully convinced by the "will make fares lighter for everyone else" argument. The economics of planes are heavily weighted towards the passengers up front - business & premium economy make more profit per sqft for the airline than seats at the back. So I'd imagine that a reduction in demand for premium seats could actually increase prices.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#179

Post by wtcactus »

Unlike the idea I’ve initially got from reading some of the comments here, the workers aren’t striking for long overdue measures that will save the company and get engineers back in charge of Boeing.

They are striking to get the biggest share possible of the pie before Boeing completely crumbles down. Reading the news, there isn’t a single demand from the workers that’s about trying to get the company back on its feet.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#180

Post by JKCalhoun »

M95D wrote: post #160
hungie wrote: post #21

Good. Jim McNerney absolutely shredded the culture, and eroded decades of good will. It's far past time workers for Boeing pressed for things to go back to being an engineering and manufacturing led company. Striking is one way to get closer to that, good on them.

Ever heard of a stock-price led company that "went back to being an engineering and manufacturing led company"?

It may be Boeing's only chance of having a future.

Good luck, Boeing. (And I mean that.)

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