Posted on 10/21/2009 12:29:27 PM PDT by jazusamo
Boeing will decide in the next two weeks whether to put a second 787 Dreamliner final assembly line in Everett or in Charleston, S.C.
Boeing has narrowed its decision on where to put a second 787 Dreamliner final assembly line to Everett and Charleston S.C., and will make a choice within the next two weeks.
The outcome could have a profound impact on where future Boeing airplanes are built, and the key question appears to be whether the Machinists union will accede to management's demand for a long-term no-strike agreement.
In a conference call with the press this morning, chief executive Jim McNerney said talks with the union are "ongoing and on a regular basis" and said "the tone is constructive."
But McNerney made clear that the company is considering Charleston specifically because of the recent history of repeated strikes by the International Association of Machinists (IAM) in the company's Puget Sound area factories.
"The IAM and the company have had trouble figuring it out between themselves over the last few contract discussions," McNerney said. "I've got to figure out a way to reduce that risk to the company."
"I don't blame this totally on the union," McNerney said. "We just haven't figured out a way. The mix isn't working well. We've either got to satisfy ourselves that the mix is different or we've got to diversify our labor base."
South Carolina is a so-called "right-to-work" state, meaning that employees do not have to join unions even if a workplace is unionized. That leaves labor unions weak compared to states like Washington.
In Boeing's Everett plant, all production workers have to be union members. In Charleston, the workforce recently ousted the union in a decertification vote.
If Boeing were to put a 787 final assembly line in Charleston...
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
from what I hear, the BMW plant in Greenville, SC is going great...
Around the first of the year when Boeing approached the union for a no strike clause the union laughed at them and said that Boeing was bluffing about a second line outside WA. Now that the workers in SC decertified and Boeing has a fairly large plant their anyway I believe it’s getting through to the union thugs that Boeing may not be bluffing.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Boeing go with SC.
I would think that at this point their highest priority should be to figure out how to build airplanes on the FIRST line.
Yes! And a beautiful pic it is. :-)
That has been a problem, especially with the 787.
“I don’t blame this totally on the union,” McNerney said.
I am a Boeing Employee and there are things that my union does and supports that I don’t agree with.
If McNerney has a problem with Strikes, maybe Boeing should stop pulling fast ones like last time.
They offered us a contract that they knew would be rejected,
then after we had been on strike for just over thirty days,
they offered us a contract that we would have accepted if they had originally offered it.
The point being, Boeing has a labor dispute clause in their contracts with customers that lets them Slide Delivery dates for Aircraft any time there is a labor dispute that lasts over thirty days.
They were in trouble with delivery of some aircraft so this is their gambit.
It has happened before and it will happen again.
Unoions helped elect Obama and they killed GM and Chrysler. They can go to hell. I hope they move everything to SC.
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