Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boeing workers vote to strike

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 578 posts

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#531

Post by AndrewKemendo »

bdowling wrote: post #380
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #330

In my mind, this is an unalloyed good The practice alone of organizing labor power against owners, irrespective of the demands, given the existing state of the world, is what is needed to show Class solidarity. Simply showing class solidarity in order to kick off other strikes is valuable in and of itself. Y’all really have to understand a general strike is coming. A general strike means the labor class (you most lik…

> A general strike means the labor class ... stop working in order to put extreme pressure on the group of people who do control those contracts and who do control capital . > Such a system ... should be Deconstructed as rapidly as possible with the expropriation of all that capital (emphasis added) The result, predictably, is that unions lose all their leverage against the investor class (which no longer exists) and…

Pray tell:

How much of the Soviet Union was owned in any functional, practical or legal way, by the proletariat?

Oh zero? Did they have communal decision making? Oh also no?

How is state ownership of everything in a dictatorship relevant here at all?

It remains mind-boggling that the only thing people can fathom as an alternative to nightmare capitalism is state centralized, economic controlled bullshit dictatorship.

Unreal

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#532

Post by AndrewKemendo »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #344
Nifty3929 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an ancient and universal idea, that has failed to deliver prosperity and growth, and often drives societies that were once flourishing into starvation. Capitalism is the new, cool, unique idea that has actually delivered prosperity for society. Not perfectly evenly, but certainly more evenly than other ideas like socialism, fascism and feudalism.

You're conflating political and economic systems here. Capitalism is fully compatible with fascism. And it emerged out of and is an evolution of manorialism, the economic system used under european feudalism.

Not just compatible, but capitalism requires fascism because by default it alienates the person doing work from capturing the value via exploiting the variability in standard of living and environmental sustainability.

Economists call this “arbitrage” which is a fancy word for, “Someone can dominate you economically and you have no legal avenue to avoid it.”

Proudhon covered this thoroughly in “What is property”

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#533

Post by Nemo_bis »

passwordoops wrote: post #125
Simon_ORourke wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Muilenberg and McNerney “had personal reasons to emphasize productivity and cost-cutting” because their compensation was tied to share performance. Together they took $209 million in total pay over seven years. Absolutely stunning - those guys will walk away from this mess with more money than God and American aviation will take a backwards step that may take decades to fix if at all... fuming here.

Incentives matter. The extremist solution would be to ban executive compensation tied to stock price and some mechanism where every penny more that goes into buybacks/dividends than R&D/CapEx is taxed at 105%. Oh, and make executive and BoDs personally and criminally liable for safety fiascos like the 737MAX. I bet you'll see culture change in a hurry under those circumstances

"Some mechanism" is called simply taxation. In 1944, the top income tax bracket in the USA was 94 %. Nowadays you'd also need a wealth tax to deal with the perverse incentives caused by past accumulation of stock.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/09/thomas-piketty...

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#534

Post by NotACop182 »

Aunche wrote: post #341
ordu wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see this repeated often - blame placed entirely on management and not the workers. Why do you believe that? Because it is management who hire and fire workers, who pays them salary, who says them what to do, who does the quality checks on the work done and so on. If management couldn't get their workers to do a quality work, it is the management's fault. In this case the management should be fired and the company…

> While management had all the power, including the power to fire bad workers and to hire better ones. Including the power to force workers into compulsory training courses, including the power to create a system of incentives that would encourage good work, and so on. That would be true if there wasn't a union. They place limits on who Boeing can hire and fire and have to agree to any changes in incentives.

Unions just for existing do not get special protections. Contracts and rights are agreed to by both parties. The processes involved in the firing of employees is black and white. Whatever the company agreed to is the rules.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#536

Post by Nemo_bis »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #5

It should be illegal* to post articles about strikes without including details on current deal, current offer, and union demands. All these pieces try to influence your opinion without providing any details! Maybe the union demands are reasonable, or maybe they're not. Give me specifics please! *obvious hyperbole

You mean it should be illegal to link the WSJ, which buries such information in a pile of anti-union propaganda? ;-)

If you need more information on the union's position you can check the union's website: https://www.iam751.org/?zone=/unionactive/private_view_page....

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#537

Post by Nemo_bis »

wtcactus wrote: post #179

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 fee…

If you're interested in the union's proposals for those "long overdue measures", obviously you don't ask the WSJ.

> No one understands safety better than the very workers who meticulously build these planes every single day. That's why we must have a voice in the company's safety initiatives, as our livelihoods depend on it. Our Members are experts - they know how to build the best airplanes in the world, and they are the ones who will bring this company back on track.

>

> We spent Saturday drafting and proposing a new safety and quality framework that provides Union involvement and input into the Quality Management System, ensuring we protect the integrity of our production system. We know that the only way to ensure Boeing makes the right decisions is to have a seat at the table when critical decisions about quality, safety, and new product developments are made. Having a voice at the highest levels can and will influence changes. That's what we are trying to do in this contract. We are proposing these articles for the first time in our history and know that our Members' voice is critical in this effort.

https://www.iam751.org/?zone=/unionactive/private_view_page....

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#538

Post by spit2wind »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45
darby_nine wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

You probably know more about this than I do since you claim "people keep repeating this without context." Looking at your links, it seems to me a confusion of terms. Yes, the legal entities behind GM and Chrysler went away...in order for the new entities to receive billions.

So, technically, you are correct. The business entities of June 2009 failed. However, the consumer DGAF who owns www.gm.com or www.chrysler.com. They can still go to their local dealer and purchase a vehicle "made by" these companies. The "companies" live on.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#539

Post by thrance »

refurb wrote: post #524
thrance wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, from what I can read online, it seemed the practice was generally regarded as market manipulation prior to 1982 and so was de facto illegal. So yeah, thanks Reagan indeed. There are good reasons to blame him for his part in the current state of affairs.

Not sure what you’re reading online, but it’s not correct. Stock buybacks were legal and happened before 1982. The “thanks Reagan indeed” is just your own internal biases. The President didn’t draft the law and the Democratic Congress passed it. So quite odd to blame a single person. It should be a warning against believing things on the internet because they conform to your biases. Check your sources.

I'm not even American... When I say "blame Reagan", I obviously don't mean him personally, rather his government or his neoliberal ideology even.

And you keep acting like the 1982 law had no effect when it made the largely marginalized practice of stock buybacks mainstream. Maybe you should check your biases.

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/10/23/the-dangers-of-bu...

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10266

https://www.vox.com/2018/8/2/17639762/stock-buybacks-tax-cut...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01651...

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#540

Post by lotsofpulp »

ryandrake wrote: post #297
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their stock is down 55% in the last five years. How is that an exemplar of profit making capitalism?

> How is that an exemplar of profit making capitalism? They still exist and are regularly pumping out millionaires from their executive suites. It's helpful to think about corporate America as a gigantic factory, but instead of a factory that makes gadgets or appliances, it's a factory that makes millionaires. On one end of the factory, the raw materials come in: Able-bodied workers, money from customers, and capital…

Why would the shareholders choose to be shareholders in such an organization?
Post reply on HN