Boeing has always been the sweet kid who gets teased among the ring of aerospace defense contractors. They build great planes … but the whole knife in the back defense contractor shuffle? They just never had the required evil in them. They’ve forever tried to stand on building solid, serviceable equipment instead of standing on the necks of their competitors.
I guess they must be warming up to this whole evil business … and they’re starting by learning how to screw their union employees and they’re breaking the law in the process.
First a tiny bit of Boeing history …
Europe is free thanks in part to this guy - the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.
And we finished the war in the Pacific with dramatically fewer casualties thanks to long legged B-29 Superfortress.
World War II was a massive change for this country at home. My father entered the work force at fifteen, about the time our troops were hitting the beaches of Normandy. He got into the rail workers union and when he was disabled at fifty that plan ensured we didn’t end up on the street.
Today Boeing wants to get paid, it wants our tax dollars … but long standing protections for those who build the planes? Not so much, according to this article.
Boeing should be forced to open a Washington state assembly line after violating workers’ rights by building a 787 Dreamliner plant in South Carolina, away from its Seattle-area union labor force, the U.S. government said.
The National Labor Relations Board said in a complaint today that the planemaker was “motivated by a desire to retaliate for past strikes and chill future strike activity” when it decided in 2009 to construct the new factory. The company said it will “vigorously contest” the complaint.
So this all started in 2009, when Boeing decided on a second plant in South Carolina in order to loosen labor’s chokehold on the company.
So a man who makes over six million dollars a year, Mr. W. James McNerney, is concerned that the wages of $60,000 a year machinists will hurt his company’s bottom line.
I’ve recently started pushing for some upgrades for our fixed wing gunship fleet, most recently in Protecting Navy Seals. I don’t think any of that work needs to go to companies that are going to break our long standing labor laws. Those laws are there for very good reasons and we ignore them at our peril.