It's entirely rationial. You are assuming that contempory corporate administrative culture (and the financial sector) is a human enterprise. Boeing is Borg.

Great to see the Stranger supporting the Machinists. Too many out there are succumbing to the crab pot mentality.

I'm so tired of hearing that "things are too tight" for decent wages and benefits when all someone has to do is compare median household wages with per capita GDP.

The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.

Attributed to Winston Churchill: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Winsto…

Good point on the Airbus option. I hadn't thought about that. Yes, stands to reason that if Boeing leaves its Puget Sound trained and experienced workforce behind, Airbus might look long at hard at picking up the slack. Perhaps Boeing leaving would be the best outcome in the long term - obviously the executive wing of the company has a hostile attitude towards its unionized workers (and towards Washington state as well, given how much the company demands in tax 'incentives'). If they want to go all Ayn Rand on its employees, who needs them? Just one headache after another. Goodbye, good riddance.

And as an aside, how come all the usual-suspect pundits only blame the union for Boeing potentially moving out of the region? Isn't Boeing also responsible for playing such hardball with the union and demanding such drastic reduction in benefits? Of course the union members rejected that contract. It was designed to be rejected. Why are these companies never held accountable for screwing over their workers? Its like everyone is cheering the race to the bottom, because... I don't know. People can only imagine a world where it is ok, Patriotic even, for the investment/executive class to shamelessly exploit and hurt everyone else to the full extent possible, because that's the natural order of things? Very odd.

It's not odd at all. The world has changed greatly and disastrously; no corporation should logically be considered "responsible" in ethical terms for what it does to its workforce because ethics no longer enter into the equation (and they only did so for a few decades). The US is the most extreme example of this new world because we don't have the history of "socialist" worker/employer relationships. However, Europe is heading toward the new world also, so it isn't likely that Airbus would wish to jump into Puget Sound and deal with an already enraged workforce. We're being illogical to think they would.

How much reality is there to the hope that Airbus would move in provide jobs for all these people?

How much of an extra discount will Boeing need to offer customers in order to allay their well-founded fears that an all new aircraft built by an all new workforce at an all new facility may run far behind schedule and way below the quality standards set by unionized Machinists?

That says it all. Highly-trained AND experiencedpeople deserve to be compensated for what they are worth. You don't get that overnight or even in a couple of years.

If Boeing wants to throw its reputation away, that's on them.

@8, not much.

Goldy, An experienced work force provides a short-term advantage and in the eyes of our corporate masters pension plans are a long-term disadvantage. Your argument overplays the value of this advantage.

Wishing for Boeing to leave is the exact opposite of supporting the workers, assholes.

Glad to hear others saying the same thing:

Gov Inslee - Call Airbus. WA has $8.9B incentives if Airbus moves production line to WA.

What's good for goose is good for gander.

Boeing has decided to redefine its priorities:
1) Bust unions
2) Overpay executives
3) Extort tax breaks
4) Build airplanes ...
5) ... that are safe and reliable

Sort of like the big three automakers in the 1970's. With an all consuming focus on fighting unions, things like building rust resistant cars that could drive 300,000 miles and get better than 7mpg fell by the wayside so that foreign automakers ate them alive in the 1980's. Let's see if Boeing can avoid that fate.

This is why Inslee's actions this week drove me crazy. If he had kept his mouth shut (instead of pressuring the union to take Boeing's offer), he would have been able to swoop in after the fact and publicly broker a deal, allowing all sides to save face. As it stands now, he will have no credibility with the Machinists or in the eye of the public - he'll simply look like Boeing's puppet, and justifiably so.

@15

But _could_ Inslee have saved any deal? "Can this marriage be saved?" I haven't followed the details so serious question.

My sense from observing afar is that Boeing is making a strategic decision -- they want to leave to make a statement to show how tough they are to ALL states and ALL unions everywhere. They'll keep ratcheting up to create an excuse to leave. Linda like Nixon's madman theory of diplomacy. Do something so outrageous that opponents get scared off.

Is/was there a deal possible short of the Machinists agreeing to every detail??

Aren't you the same libs who tell us that the coasts will be inundated by 30 meter sea level rises?

Why build a factory underwater?

@9: If Boeing doesn't build planes here, we don't get the $9 billion. Duh. Goldy, is that you trolling in disguise?

Boeing doesn't need an excuse or even a rationale to leave. As a corporation it left the state already; as an employer it can do what it wants once the current contract ends. If it valued a technically-efficient workforce, it wouldn't have located the 787 in South Carolina.

The enraged anguish over Boeing sounds like a longstanding loyal wife's wailings about her husband's intended decampment to a young trophy wife. Yes, a disgusting, possibly antifeminist, and definitely stereotypical analogy, but still true. The husband and Boeing will do it because they want to and they can.

Make Paine Field into a northern version of Sea-Tac. We need a second airport. (Boeing field doesn't count)

@19:

I wouldn't be so certain about that. For one thing, the overwhelming majority of Boeing's commercial output can be attributed directly to the assembly plants in Renton & Everett. Of the 476 commercial aircraft Boeing delivered between January & September of this year, the South Carolina 787 facility has contributed maybe a dozen (currently SC is producing a mere 1.5 planes per month); that comes out to less than 3% of the company's year-to-date output. In other words, 97% of commercial aircraft production is being done in Everett & Renton, and that includes taking up the slack for the way-behind-projections SC plant.

So, in order for Boeing to completely re-site their commercial aircraft production, they'd need to find a facility (or more likely several facilities) capable of throughputting some 600-plus planes a year in order to keep up with demand and not suffer a potentially disastrous backlog - something they're already fighting to stay on top of, given the failure of the SC plant to get up-to-speed.

To-date, Boeing's investment in SC is roughly $570 mm, for a facility that is currently only contributing 3% of their commercial output. Now imagine they decided tomorrow to relocate the other 97% of their commercial production outside of the Puget Sound region. Using the amount invested in SC (where some of the facilities & workforce were transitioned from existing Boeing subcontractors) as a rough baseline, the company would have to spend somewhere on the order of $50 BILLION in order to get new facilities up-and-running - something that, even if financially feasible, would take years to accomplish. Does Boeing even HAVE $50B in cash reserves? Can it find existing facilities capable of handling the workload? Can if find a labor pool in these places that can actually put the planes together (again, look to SC as an example of how that HASN'T worked out anywhere close to management's expectations)? Can it afford to transition to these other locations AND continue to build planes in the Puget Sound (because it can't just stop the assembly lines while it does all this other stuff)?

I would say the answer to most, if not all of the above questions is: Not. Bloody. Likely. Such a massive, wholesale relocation would take decades and tens of billions of dollars to accomplish, and with management so focused on shareholder return and padding their own bonus packages, it's highly doubtful they can afford to maintain profitability and continue to pay shareholders dividends AND invest in multiple assembly plants on this scale.

@21

Very interesting. Fascinating really.

Here's an example of why anonymous commenting is so bad. In a nice way, can I ask if do you know what you are talking about? Your analysis is very persuasive. Sounds like you know the biz. Have you really studied aerospace? Been in it? Etc Etc.

@22:

I am far from anonymous - my handle is my last name.

My only involvement in the aerospace industry was acting in a Boeing industrial right after they merged with McDonald Douglas back in 1998. But the information I cited is easily obtainable via Google search, and the principles involved are those that would commonly occur for any business engaged in a similar endeavor.

Not rocket science by any stretch - a subject about which I DO know a bit more than the lay-person.

@23

How funny.
I assumed you were one of those...hiders.
Hello. Glad to meet you. ;)

Goldy, for an atheist, you sure are doing God's work.

@20 That's a great idea, making Paine Field into a real commercial airport, but the wealthy suburban residents of Mukilteo (75% of which moved there knowing they moved right next door to a goddamn airport) are firmly against it. And they have the dollars to sway the Snohomish County Council.

Sadly, it'll never happen. Right now the only thing keeping the airport going is leasing parking to Boeing. Check out the Google Earth view, and note that every available scrap of tarmac has a brand-new Boeing parked on it in long-term storage. Take that away and the airport disappears within three years.

What a great article! I think you're right, Boeing is going to move from Puget Sound with the purpose of losing Billions of dollars. They obviously want to destroy the company. Maybe they're being bribed by Airbus? I think you should be CEO.

Can we put their new tax breaks up for a referendum? At the very least it would give them another way to shoot themselves in the foot by pissing off northwest voters.