The real problem is Boeing is incapable of making a safe plane. I'm happy the employees are getting a better deal, but it doesn't change the future coffins already in service. If it's Boeing, I ain't going.
Thanks Petter. As a Boeing engineer with over 27 years with the company, think your analysis and observations are spot-on. I see Boeing's slow and very public downfall as analogous to a 737 MAX with MCAS prior to the fixes. The employees (pilots) see the plane starting to go down and try to correct it. The company management (MCAS) says, "nothing wrong here, we're going to keep pushing the nose down and there's nothing you can do about it". The pilots pull back harder, but the plane keeps overriding them until eventually Boeing is just a smoking hole in the US economy. I received my layoff notice last week. For me, it's really just an early forced retirement, as I was going to retire next year anyway. I'm just glad I'm getting off this ride before it totally breaks down. It's just not fun anymore.
Westjet have just changed my flight from a direct 787 flight to an indirect flight on 737 MAX 8, and there is no way in hell I am boarding that aircraft on a short haul, let alone transatlantic from Scotland to Canada.
King I worked for HEXEL. as security guard. They had more than internal issues. They had to close campus building due to spiritual issues. And we had to secure the building. U can ask questions still the strange activity going on. Just do your job watch the people and building. When you need back up call front.
@ZeoRDz You know Dreamliner is not particularly safe either? Haven't you been listening to all the whistlblowers? Of course the new aircrafts Boeing is now producing are safe, no matter which type, as safety control has been tightened.
I’ll never forgive Jack Welch. I’m not a religious person, but if hell exists there’s a special seat just for him. He and his cronies poisoned and destroyed everything they touched. And they’re still sitting back in their air conditioned offices as their company bleeds to death and their workers are depressed and miserable.
I was thinking the exact same thing. It’s too bad I don’t believe in hell… there should be a special place for all these executives that are happy to ruing the lives over thousands of others… so they can get cushy bonuses. All while complaining that “workers these days don’t care.” We can thank the greatest generation for this. Once they made it to the top the corporate world. Their generation mostly retired with pensions… yet they started the whole sale destruction for future generations … so they could enjoy more bonuses. During the Reagan years they setup the destruction of future people middle class. :-(
@Marinealver short-sighted tactics and obsession with downsizing, outsourcing, dealmaking, and shareholder primacy single-handedly destabilized the middle class. Walsh has influenced generations of CEOs with similar short-sighted ambitions who continue to destroy livelihoods and increase inequality to this day, he never cared about the "product" only profits.
@@picjw Capitalism CAN be healthy, but only if its being held accountable by oversight. Which is the problem in the US, as both parties are at war over this. The Democrats want oversight, the Republicans want unbridled capitalism. I'd say that thusfar the Republicans have gotten what they wanted more than the Democrats and the result is that many small businesses have been raided and put out of existence and big corporations have grown incredibly corrupt and are rotten to the core.
It's not just Boeing, it's pretty much all manufacturing in the USA. I worked for a Scandinavian owned company in the US, and it was a great place to work. It was difficult work with tight deadlines, but the employees took pride in their work and we made a great product. The customers were very happy. Then a US conglomerate bought the company and within 3 months they completely destroyed the company culture, treated the employees like garbage, and people started leaving in droves. I was one of them. Quality went downhill fast with the replacement workers, and customers were not happy. They shifted production to Mexico, but the quality was so bad they had to move production again to China. It was a death spiral. The entire conglomerate went bankrupt a few years later.
@davidvanderklauw All I know is that it was a great company to work for before the sale. After the sale went through, the new corporate owner cleaned house of the old managers and put new ones in. The new managers had no clue about the manufacturing aspect of the products, treated employees like shit, and made promises that were never kept. We were told if we didn't like it, we could leave. So a lot of us found other jobs and left.
I feel like the Boeing story is a microcosm of the general labour market in many countries - real wages have stagnated for decades whilst the top echelons continue to award themselves higher and higher pay.
Yeah I saw some video on youtube of a guy who researches companies and CEOs talking about boeing being the poster child of the downfall of essentially what all companies are doing right now and I find it easy to agree. Poor CEO management style started by the GE CEO in the 90's or something, trading the future for an extra dollar today.
While it is true to some extent in many countries, this effect is more marked in the US than anywhere else. Pretty well all the benefits of economic growth in the last 40 years the US have gone to the top 1%. It explains the anger of blue collar workers which leads them to turn to fascism.
I’m a Quality Assurance Inspector in the Renton plant and I can tell you first hand it’s a freaking mess. First line managers with the mentality of quantity over quality. Just push push push push. They pressure the machinists to do the wrong thing without directly telling them to cut corners. The quality of workers we have is abysmal as after the two 737’s crashed and Boeing had to layoff due to the plane being grounded then Covid swept the globe Boeing was hurting. When they started to recall workers late 2021 only a fraction came back. Leaving Boeing no other option other then lowering the barrier of entry hiring literally anyone that applied. No aerospace background, no machinist background, no anything. We have mechanics that don’t know how to properly hold power tools let alone use them. It’s scary. What kind of talent is Boeing going to get when if you have an aerospace background you definitely aren’t applying at Boeing to make $21 an hour then only get $1 dollar raises each year on top of waiting 6 years to max out pay.. The morale is low in the workers. We are underpaid, undertrained, and got screwed again on this latest contract negotiation. The FAA is not doing enough in my opinion. Even with their presence in the factory. Come talk to the workers. See how much they don’t know when mechanics do not know how to find engineer drawings or find the proper applicable specs that have the right torque value for the job they are trying to perform. It’s so scary. It’s only a matter of time..
My brother worked as a mechanic for an airline I will not name, and later left and even started an entirely new business on his own because he hated feeling "rushed" on jobs. He did not want to sign off on work he didn't feel completely comfortable with. I will point out he is older than me and made his career change in the early 90s.
Hiring standards are horrible (I'm not saying an A&P should be required for the factory) but they do just pull people basically off the streets. But the lack of care is massive inside the factory, and the management (and workers) inside don't help the cause. Countless repeat issues are found out on the line, that gets reported and seemingly nothing is done about it. It'd take no effort at all to do a little bit of digging to find the employees who rubber stamp jobs (QAs who don't bother to look at a job to see it's complete) and the workers who just say something is done because they likely know that the system gets checked further down the line and it'll be found. Prior to the strike 10 separate planes didn't have the FO Oxy box actually connected, went to run Crew Oxy and it just started leaking from the box. Those are only the planes I know of and considering they came out at separate times likely means there were way more. People like that need fired.
@@TheGLORY13 No A&P? (I had to look that up). Surely workers on something as complex as aircraft manufacture must all (or nearly all) have professional trade qualifications? What’s the situation at Airbus? In Europe or US? I knew a worker from one of the Airbus factories around Toulouse - highly qualified (including lots of internal training).
So you are saying the education system in the US that is catering to teacher's unions and pushing the notion that one must borrow money from the government to obtain graduate degree is the problem? The education system has failed to recognize the need for highly skilled blue collar workers and an effort should be made to promote their training along with messaging that this is a viable career path when compared to getting a poly sci or gender studies degree? Either we really care as a nation about maintaining manufacturing jobs in the US, or we don't. So far it looks like we don't.
I blame modern MBA schooling and it's flawed view that labor is simply interchangeable, rejecting the value of any skilled labor as simply greedy employees.
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That scapegoat is too small and overly simplistic. The bigger problem is the American attitude that corporation owners and executives are entitled to more of the pie than workers, and that anything to make your pie bigger and others' smaller is OK. It's when people who aren't rich promote these values like they're temporarily poor millionaires that their cognitive dissonance and self-deception kicks into overdrive.
100% the MBA's to blame. All they teach is to squeeze the workforce and screw the customer for a little more margin. Short term gain for the shirts that destroys companies. Useless middlemen are destroying everything and being richly rewarded for it.
I have worked union and non-union jobs In my career, and all of the successful companies that were good to work for all had two things in common: Good management who were honest with you, and a fairly flat hierarchy that encouraged communication and cooperation across all departments between workers and management. There is an old adage in unions: "If employers pay and treat you fairly, there is no reason for a union." It always adds insult to injury when workers see how much the company would rather lose to a strike than use it to pay for their workers.
i myself was a QA at Boeing for dreamliner & the moment they just start hiring anybody w/ no experience was never good. Especially when they cut the quality control I knew the company is going down. Half my fam still works there im a nurse student now. I just had our annual meeting & our company is growing & I luv my bosses!! Amazing people!
@@Marinealver I feel like there is no fix for a bad union. I feel like we saw it with the I.L.A situation a couple of months ago. Unions are supposed to use collective bargaining to demand what is fair for employees. However I feel like I’m the I.L.A. situation instead of demanding what’s fair theu demand whatever the hell they want and try to hold supply chains hostage. Unions have their place if used correctly but let’s not pretend they’re a bunch of angels working for unions.
Boeing is the US in miniature. Starting the the 70s, businesses decided to put profits first, the tinkle-down economy. This is the exact opposite of what made the US the economic leader.
The idea that the starting pay for people building aircraft could be similar to that of a barista or Amazon warehouse employee is absolutely mind-boggling.
And you wonder why they are barely still flying due to people under 25 treating it as if it is their first job? The quality control from what I have been reading elsewhere online, and on forums, is abysmal. That guy overseas who is cleaning used guitars with a brush and a garden hose meme bad. 1980s Yugo bad. I'd honestly not fly in one of their planes built since Covid.
In Italy a skilled aerospace machinist will get 14 or 15 an hour if lucky and I know for sure we are subcontracting for Boeing in some of our aerospace industries, I wonder why
Thats a bullshit argument because after 4 years of exp, operators could be making $110K+ with all their OT and no degree. (This is more than our early/early mid career engineers) Tell me where else you could get a job like that. Boeing also pays for an LTP program that is a free bachelor degree so you can get an engineering degree later down the line with no pay back at all. If you want to work at Dicks burgers or Starbucks you can go ahead but I can tell you that there is no career progression in those roles when you decide to eventually leave. Compared to if you worked as an operator and became an engineer or a A and P mechanic. You would have the ability to read engineering drawings, know how to navigate niche software that requires specialized training, be able to read part diagrams/ drawings etc and also have a brand name on your resume. Also the operators voted away their own pension and got a 38% salary increase over 4 years Idk why they are mad at boeing.
@@Ahfuric That might have been true, and that was the point in the video. I agree with you that's the way it was. I remember as a young engineer seeing guys selling used car making more than me... because I was in training. But what good does it do you if you are fired after 2 years because the CEO decided to sub out the production to China?
Private equity firms, board members and shareholders are the cause of the imbalance in corporate America. Stock price is the #1 priority....Employee pay and morale are at the very bottom. Also making hefty sums are the union executive leaders. I was once a shop steward for IAM. Unions don't care about employees in the traditional sense. They only see their own dollar signs and bonuses for long term contracts.
Only reasonable way to achieve that seems to be mass unionization of different feilds. Otherwise there is no incentive for these corperations to get better.
@ArmadaOne these corperations have the same shitty incentives no matter where they are headquartered. The only thing that changes is their increased ability to steamroll their works in poorer areas. Unionization is the only real way we can push back on this, coperations have already paid off all of the political parties.
I am an Australian trades person , I was making $21 an hour in 1990! When I retired six years ago I was making $55 an hour , so much for the American dream.
@@JHe-f9t $50 au is $ 32 US$ however it is not applicable because we are comparing dollars earned and spent in AU to dollars earned and spent in the US. US hourly rates are incredibly low compared to AU and most of the developed world. That is why everybody is struggling and why the country keeps being flooded by Illegals to keep wages low.
My father was a manager at the Boeing Renton plant working there from 1978 to 2004. He was Director of Quality Assurance and Customer Warranty. The culture in the company has totally flipped and you are 100% correct in your assessment of the current Boeing Company. So sad. 👎🏻
There you go that's the problem, "quality assurance managers"; didn't have any good vibes or conversations at all from Everett to Renton and Boeing field! Yes I worked at lazy B!
They rather waste billions of dollars than give a decent meaning wage increase. These are the people make the company RUN, not management. I’m so tired of seeing management screwing the workers in this country while getting all the bonuses and raises instead.
At our last staff meeting, we were informed about Boeing's new program where they will be putting cameras around their buildings.. watching cubes, watching conference rooms, watching hallways, and feeding all that data into a new machine learning system to determine building utilization. Massive waste of money....but some ATF is likely getting promoted because of their project.
I couldn’t agree more Petter. The saying these days is ‘there is no point in being loyal to your employer because the employer is not loyal to the employee’. But for our parents and grandparents, it was the opposite.
Isn't it obvious? Bosses are not friends. Job is necessary evil. You are there only because you didn't find anything better and they anyone cheaper. So do your minimum effort 8 hours, go back to you life and forget about them untill next day.
@@Sicarius888Work is always going to be work, but it’s a hell of a lot more bearable when each employee knows that they’re all pushing in the same direction for a larger purpose.
@@Sicarius888 It's hard to really understand for newer generations, but back then, before the world was connected by the internet, things moved a lot slower and were a lot more localized. The business that stayed open were the ones that were loyal to their employees. Don't get me wrong, the companies still made the big bucks, but workers benefited from mutual loyalty. Getting job security in an economy that suffered 2 world wars and a depression.
@@JFJD It really isn't more bearable. We all knew we are all pushing in the same direction. And that direction was another exotic car or mansion for our bosses. I quit and started my own 1 person company and working for yourself is the only way to care. Maybe it was different once, but now employees are just disposable tools that all companies exploit and discard because there are always more of them.
I was thinking of joining Boeing after being the the military (aviation mechanic and flight engineer) of 25 years. I was offered $20 an hr. and would have to work swing shift. It took me a long time to decide that, because of strikes and the McDonnell merger, this might not be the job for me. It's kinda sad, really, how screwed up this company has become.
Boeing’s story is the story of so much of corporate America in the last 40 years: continuing to demand loyalty from workers while offering none in return. We’ve had a brief window where organized labor has shown more strength than at any time since before Reagan, but I do not expect that to continue. Replacing the most union friendly administration of my lifetime with one openly hostile even to the basic premise of collective bargaining doesn’t strike me as a move that will help labor. Given that, I think the machinists got the best deal done that they could, and just in time. Replacing pensions with 401k’s was always about getting some part of the workforce to think stock prices mattered more in their lives than wages, benefits, job security, and working conditions; it will take a larger culture change than just one strike to make pensions come back, over a period of many years. Given the impatience of the American voting public it’s hard to imagine that kind of sustained pressure ever taking shape, and that’s if Leon doesn’t find a way to outlaw unions altogether.
Yup, loyalty in corporate speak always goes one way and means "work your a** off for a pittance and thank us on your knees for the experience and for not firing your a** while we reap massive profits."
A boss who I once had started using the euphemism "the professional day" - meaning everyone should be working extra hours for free. He was displeased with me pointing out that doing something for money makes you a professional while doing something for free makes you an amateur. I work somewhere now where I do care about what we do and the culture is great so they don't have to think up phrases to persuade me to put in extra when it's needed.
@@ACCPhil Yeah, that's a tried and trusted tactic many bosses use. My partner always went all out in her probation time whenever she was hired and I've always called her a fool for it. But the moment you give them more than they pay you for, they expect you to do it when you're hired as well. You simply can't walk that back.
Loyalty used to make sense. I think companies wanted to limit union activity, so they did their own employee pensions. So you might be able to work for a company that employed you for your entire career, retrained you when they needed to, and gave you a pension. And in return you tried to do a good job, made sacrifices during hard times, encouraged your kids to work there, and even voted the way your company wanted. The Reagan administration ended this, and now companies try to trick, bully, and manipulate their employees into being loyal.
As a software engineer, started recently to work for a US company(having worked ~10 years for European companies) and these guys treat their employees like slaves: no concept of free/personal time(was even asked once to enter a meeting at 03:00 AM and then were disgruntled that I refused), constantly remind employees that they don’t like when they take vacations, etc… The Germans expected you to respect their personal time(can’t contact 30 minutes before work day ends) and they respected yours
@@MLennholm I was a shift manager (salary) at a factory for a fortune 500 company. I chose to work every other weekend. I was passed over for a promotion because "I didn't come in enough on the weekends". I'd get in at 5am, and my boss would be at his desk. I'd leave at 7pm, and my boss would still be at his desk. Cost him his marriage but he got promoted. American work culture is sick.
Lmao wait until you see Chinese tech companies, or any other Asian based tech companies. One rest day every 2 weeks, 12 hr mandatory working per day (no extra wage since this is not considered overtime), and only 12-13 days per year for national holidays.
Bill Allen too. Allen was a simple man who ran the company with a no-nonsense, no-frills attitude. He did not provide any of the executives with limo services or private jets because he believed it was important for them to stay connected to their employees and customer base. Contrast that with Dave Calhoun who was spending company money to go on vacation.
Holy crap these planes are being assembled by workers getting worse pay than warehouse workers? Is the C-suite completely insane? The shareholders need to kick them out.
Ideally we would kick the shareholders out as well, making Boeing employee-owned. Socialist utopia, I know, but at the moment the alternative is watching American planes fall apart in mid-air and perhaps also the company shutting down outright.
It's not just Boeing. All jobs in the US are paying about half of what they paid a generation ago. Except for government workers. Example: Starting salary for Engineers in 1980 was about 25k$ per year. Inflation since then has been about a factor of five. So that starting salary, if it had kept up with the value of the dollar, should today be 125k$. But it's only about 60k$. Less than half. This is true across all jobs in the US.
He figured out how to take advantage of all the changes from Reagan going forward. Right now a business's only product is stock price. But change the laws, change they way they do business. If there was any way to do that anymore.
Exactly. People don't know but Welch's supposed performance is just a fake facade. In his final years for GE to make their number's they sucked money from their Munich Re insurance (reserves) side. After he left this led to Munich Re getting downgraded below investment grade and so GE had to sell them off. Thanks for your skimming and hurting a business Jack.
Unless you made this a law it wouldn't work. Skilled managers would just go to companies willing to pay them high salaries, and you'd only be able to hire managers who "couldn't get a better job". Then, as soon as they got a better offer they'd leave - which hurts stability.
@@PsRohrbaugh But Boeing managers are not skilled. The problem with these obscene pay packages is they attract grifters who are good at marketing themselves, not who are good at actually doing the job. Put another way, the wide pay band attracts the wrong kind of people into those positions.
When you eliminate pensions, you eliminate a big incentive for your most valued employees to stay at your company. Talk all you want about TQM, 6S, how anyone can do a job with the right instruction set, and how employees are your most valuable resource, but employee experience is priceless. Boeing wasn't the only aerospace company to learn this the hard way, but now no one wants to be the first to market with a return to employee-focused companies, so we are stuck with an unsustainable business model that benefits only the senior managers and the shareholders. It is sickening.
You forgot the biggest mess, Certified Operator. There is nothing wrong with a second set of eyes inspecting the work you just performed, well except it costs money. Well, it costs a whole lot more when you have to send teams to the customer to repair or replace an assembly improperly installed.
@jfverboom7973 there used to it. trump showed you can just keep delaying the cases until they forget about you. Our justice system is shit cuz they don't lock up the rich!
You gotta wonder why Wall Street is so dumb that they keep investing in a company that made a plane whose software told it to dive into the ground. And can't even figure out how to make a plane that stays in one piece. Boeing's quality control is so bad you'd think they made toilet paper.
I feel sorry for the workers at Boeing, especially considering the large compensation packages of the management team that has ruined the company. Not that it’s any consolation, but defined benefit pensions seem to be disappearing for everyone, without adequate wage compensation. It would be interesting to see a video about Airbus and whether it has a corporate culture similar to what Boeing used to have.
@rolf7135 every time I see Boeing screwing up I keep thinking "when's the news on airbus gonna break?" Pretty morbid, but I think no one will take a serious look at them until their planes start falling from the sky.
@@owangejewiceairbus is still in large parts owned by the governments of France, Germany, and Spain. For them Airbus is more of a prestige project than a money maker, so you don’t see the same cost cutting/profits over safety culture as with Boeing.
@@owangejewice I don't think so; Airbus appears to have more control. I expect it to perform as Boeing once did. Additionally, the management compensation package seems healthier. I have a very positive impression of Airbus.
@@MustNotContainSpaces I think you’re absolutely right. I hope they perform better than Boeing did. Aviation seems to be an industry where Europe has a slight competitive edge.
These problems are symptomatic of a bigger problem in the United States and many parts of the world. Workers don't make livable wages but executives and investors take home millions in pay and bonuses.
@@cirilloucazzu4457 I am an investor (through stocks) - but still can't see how the Boeing strategy should produce high returns. Would have been more productive to pay works 50% more - and not fuck up almost all programs and waste billions upon billions. The most valuable and high yielding companies do not become so, through penny pinching workers - that is a bottom feeder strategy.
@@theestorestlucia Reading (comprehension) is fundamental. I didn’t say everyone should become an exec or investor. The point is we all have choices; if you choose to become a worker bee knowing what the compensation is, that’s a choice-not a mandate. “The man is keeping me down” is a rather tired trope and an unpersuasive argument. If you don’t like what “the man” is offering, do something else.
When i started my career, there was still mutual loyalty between workers and company. Of the years that faded and what made it hit home was the year that the company was at risk of not making the quarterly numbers, thereby threatening executive bonuses. The solution was to lay off enough workers to make the numbers work. The executives got their bonuses and the workers got more work. Fortunately, I was able to retire last year. I cant imagine how bad things will get before they get better.
Any halcyon days of mutual respect and loyalty are probably fond re-invention, but, even if briefly true, were the aberration. The enmity between labor and capital has always been present with both sides feeling aggrieved and exploited. Now, I know which side I favor in this debate...
What an easy gig! To be able to simply fire some workers to "make" some numbers and then get a bonus for that. That is amazing. Who were the people who decided to offer such a gig? And who did they decide to offer it to?
That’s the problem with the current capitalism culture: everything is only about profits and nothing is about building and maintaining a successful, stable and long lasting company anymore. Everything is about short term profits and managers and investors are blind to long-term sustainability. To fix that, I think we would need to decouple investors from any company decisions, as well as to make short term investments unattractive by heavily taxing them, for example if stocks are sold earlier than after 5 to 10 year holding time.
Yes, activist investors are a disaster. These days "Made in the USA" means stay away. All their strategies are just a race to the bottom - they basically ruin businesses. And lives too. I've read that rail car inspections went from a 90 point check to a 9 point check. For cars carrying pressurized fuel! Insane.
I worked as a visiting engineer at Boeing in 1979-80 (on the 767) and 1991-92 (on the 777) and the engineers (who uniquely were also unionized) seemed quite happy. Alan Mulally was the program head on the 777 and gave all program people a pocket card with 21 program goals, the last of which said "Have Fun"! I think that, as you suggest, that the McDonnell Douglas acquisition was the time things began to go downhill.
I retired from Boeing in 23’ after 35 years plus. I was flightline QA on 777 and 767. The culture over the years became toxic. By the end of my time I just didn’t want to be there anymore. What used to be an exciting job was now a daily slog filled with new hoops and bullshit rules that served no one. Boeing allowed fringe groups to call the shots on the means of production. ie safety, auditors The delivery and flying schedules remained the same. Poor quality from the factory and suppliers alike put further pressure on. Yes the merger didn’t help but Boeing started changing in the years leading up to it.
I worked at Boeing also in California. While the execs were certainly greedy it was also the politicians that killed the company. Inventing new taxes for everything they could think of, dictating what kind of work we could do, and, the worse, telling us who to hire. I think a lot of the execs saw the writing on the wall and decided to cash out while they could. You can't work in such a business hostile environment.
5 years at Boeing made me NEVER want to have anything to do with the aviation industry anymore. Before that I was a Jet Engine mechanic in the Marine Corps for 13 years.
He should. In that era, aerospace engineers knew their stuff! They had to. Computers were there and capable, but limited to some necessary users. Everyone else worked from drawings and needed to have a solid understanding of the tasks as well as the aircraft in general. The same could be said for the people building the Gemini and Apollo space programs. Literal rocket scientists able to build engines that performed to spec despite manufacturing variations. They would do the math and adapt to the work in progress, each engine a unique work in some ways. Was a great era to be in engineering. Those people pushed tech forward with deliberate intent, seeking to be the beat!
I agree. I retired from a healthcare system after 32 yrs. Many changes with everything being outsourced and no more nuns running the place. Mergers everywhere with other healthcare systems. You loose the culture you once had. All the fun perks went away years ago. Healthcare is an enormous mess in the U.S. as well as Americans not wanting to be responsible living a healthy lifestyle and expecting too much from the healthcare system to fix them.
No, what he is outlining is how the US is an oligarchy. After the last election, it will only get worse. The working class just f*cked itself.
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Vicious cycles of under-regulated greed combined with increasing corruption (incl. regulatory capture) and decreasing education. If you want a stable society, you gotta have sufficient (democratic) socialism (investment) and substantive oversight of corporations that can't be bought, politicized, or trimmed by DOGE.
When you get rid of the employees that know and have solved all the contruction problems you had, you end up with people that have no clue what they are doing.
Speaking as a former GE employee, yeah, they sucked bad to work for. Fortunately, they sold the entire water division to a French conglomerate that was so much better for us.
The one single good thing that came out of GE owning the company I work for was that we did get a defined benefit pension, that is still in place and I will be collecting from once I reach 65. It's not much as GE discontinued offering the pension, first to new employees, then to existing ones. You still kept what had already been contributed, but no further contributions, other than those required by law for funding purposes continued.
The phrase "tighten your belt" is quietly horrifying. It implies that you will go through a period of time where you make so little money that you begin to waste away physically as you starve to death.
Yep. That is indeed where that expression comes from, because for the vast majority of human history, that's been the harsh reality under which most people have lived. The last 80 or so years in the "west" (this will pertain to some countries in the geographical east as well... Japan, Sout Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand...), has been one most extraordinary exception.
@@msromike123 That's absolute nonsense. No one should be skipping meals if they have a full time job! If you can't pay your workers at minimum a living wage you have no right to be in business.
@@hurri7720 No, i am only flying Scandinavian Airlines. I do have a friend flying MAX for Norwegian. Even he was nervous when he started flying the MAX some months ago. SAS is better and cheaper then Norwegian these days anyway :)
I can't fathom Boeing's workers getting a base pay of $21 an hour. How do you pay Amazon and McDonald's wages to your workers who are producing sophisticated aircraft averaging $250 to $400 million a unit while the company is getting numerous orders from customers averaging 10 to 30 billion dollars per order, all while the ceo gets a 29 million dollar bonus?
The overall business environment in the U.S. has been toxic for the last 20 years. Unapologetic, uncaring, and mercenary in the extreme. Basically feudalism, except you get to choose which lord to serve as a peasant. I think we will see more strikes in the future. Workers aren't stupid. They can see the money flowing in a giant river up to the 1% up top and their wages remaining as flat as the warehouse floor they work on.
In Switzerland we call that „the golden parachute“. The last guy taking one has been trashtalked so hard by the public that he decided to pass on the offer. 😂😂😂
And the saddest part of the story is... $60m doesn't even sound that much for CEO compensation any more compared to what current CEOs get. Things have only got worse.
My spouse was an employee of an American company. His experience? You could fall over dead at work, and management at best would step over your body. At worst, you'd be kicked into a gutter so nobody else would see you or get hurt and claim injury benefits. Employees are supposed to be grateful for jobs, and higher ups are supposed to get every dollar for shareholders, no matter what.
Excellent recap of the changes that have occurred at Boeing. My father was an electrical engineer with Boeing military and then Boeing civilian transport. I grew up in a community where it seemed 1/2 the families worked for Boeing and it was great. As a little kid I remember the company giving out tickets for the amusement park at the Seattle Center as a perk. My father died in '72 but I still felt a loyalty to the company - having a benevolent employer creates that kind of loyalty and good will. When Boeing moved its corporate office to Chicago I was shocked and though I became a firefighter instead of working at Boeing, I felt betrayed. The change in culture from engineering and manufacturing excellence to do more with less has made me completely distanced from Boeing; now I would rather fly AirBus as the McDonell Douglas takeover ruined the company. MD bought Boeing with Boeing's own money!
I know a Boeing engineer who, in 1952, bought a waterfront home on Mercer Island, a nice suburb of Seattle, for $8000. His children recently sold it for $6 million. Microsoft caused housing prices to skyrocket out of this world.
Wow. I thought my family did pretty well but that Boeing engineer did great. My parents bought our second home in Houston for $23K in 1969 - I now own and live in it and the lot alone is worth $1,000,000.
Microsoft didn't cause the housing price to soar. Microsoft had been in Seattle since 1979. It was the Cali migration that started in the 1990's and has continued to this day.
@@daveb2280 In Kirkland, I sold real estate in the mid-80s, and Microsoft was making 30-year-olds instant millionaires. They were buying up everything. It was crazy. Then, the California invasion fed the fire even more.
IAM told their constituents to save up for a long strike, and many did. Boeing (McDonald Douglas actually) has been adversarial to their employees the entire 30 years (retired thank god) I worked there.
So many corporations these days don't give a flying fart about their employees or qualities. It's always about quantity numbers stockholders and bonuses. Everything else takes a back seat. It's really pathetic
@@mapleext “Maximizing shareholder value”. Yes, unregulated capitalism will lead to short-term thinking. Look at the history of steel makers in the USA for a glimpse at the end game.
@@jacksons1010 Same in the UK. Similarly to much of the so-called "Western World", we've lost nearly all of our strategic industries because they "weren't competitive".
Boeing isn't alone in how it's devalued work; it's a symptom of a change in the political consensus which took hold under Reagan and Thatcher. Where previously, increases in productivity had been shared between staff and employers, increasingly wages stagnated and benefits were removed. CEO pay skyrocketed despite such people bearing none of the risks of entrepreneurship. Now, 40 years later, workers are paid far less in real terms than they were at the start of the Reagan era. What should have been a continual improvement in work patterns, pay and benefits has instead become a race to the bottom. Sadly, the English-speaking press is largely owned by billionaires who want workers to remain docile, so they push the line of low taxes and lax regulation which allows stock buy-backs and removal of benefits. And, of course, they demonize the unions. Without unions, we wouldn't have weekends or paid sick leave or any other benefits we should regard as basic rights.
You are right to highlight the paradigm shift in the way US companies are managed. The 'laissez-faire' philosophy, along with the attendant deregulation of industries in the 1980's, have given company management the upper hand and they are now solely responding to shareholders' interests; workers became disposable resources. There is no longer loyalty between employees and employers, no shared sacrifices and no shared rewards. The results of this shift seen so far are dismal and bode ill for the future, not just for the workers but also for the companies which being so fixated on short-term results neglect planning & executing for future opportunities. This serious problem, it is noted, does NOT affect only Boeing, but many formerly powerful American manufacturing entities. I feel for Mr. (Kelly) Ortberg, as I think he does see the problems, and wants to implement necessary changes, for the Boeing job is very much a poisoned chalice.
Instead of letting the workers strike - costing BILLIONS - why not spend that money on the employees BEFORE they go on strike ? That would have saved Boeing a lot of problems.
My guess here is that the previous C-suite management didn't much care since they knew they were halfway out the door, and the new team had not had the opportunity to even engage with anyone yet. The strike was likely planned around this change in management. Depending on how you look at it, it could be a horrendously negative start to a relationship, or a clean slate that will lead to improvements. At this point, we'll just have to wait and see.
I heard somewhere they can just claim most of that money as operational losses on their taxes and essentially get it back. Not entirely sure but I wouldn’t be surprised.
It was not just Boeing that was demanding worker loyalty without returning that loyalty. Almost the entire industry turned on it's workers which is why I left the Aviation industry 30 years ago.
Honestly, the same things have been done to all employees in most industries in the UK over the last 30-40 years, wages have just not gone up with inflation and the cost of living, this is why most single people can't afford to live independently and have to share or stay home with family or claim welfare on top of their full time salaries. Even 2 adults in full time employment struggle to make ends meet, which is just ludicrous. Employers have simply reaped in every growing profit margins and cost cutting and virtually never pass any of that success on to the people who actually ensure their product/business makes money in the first place. Which is why it is so frustrating that those parent's who had much better wages to bills ratios who have paid off their mortgages years ago on a single income to a household constantly have a go at younger generations saying they're just lazy and should stop complaining. Housing was a mere 20% of their wages, now it's well over 60%. Sorry for the side rant, I just wanted to point out that's it's not just airline companies doing this, it's all the big companies and industries.
Prior to the 1970's, American corporations were more-or-less aligned with Henry Ford's statement that the purpose of a corporation was to 1) Provide good jobs by 2) Making a quality priduct at 3) An affordable price. I think that describes the Boeing of old, and they apparently stayed with that up until the MD merger. Circa 1970, Milton Friedman stated that the purpose of a corporation was to "maximize shareholder value." This was adopted immediately by the electronics industry and gradually by the rest of corporate America over the next few decades. As a result, experienced employees were no longer an asset, but a liability. Thus, employees continue to fall further behind inflation while executives, whose compensation is tied to short-term "shareholder value," continue to increase their wealth even as their short-term focus has led to the long-term gutting of the American middle class.
Inflation-adjusted median household income has increased markedly since the 1970s. Question: if you sell your house, do you sell it for an affordable price or for the maximum price that a buyer is willing to pay?
As someone who grew up in this time frame life was much more affordable then than now and almost every one had defined pension plans and while people make more the cost of almost everything has skyrocketed take dental care it really hasn’t improved but dental companies (there are few private dental offices now)go to conferences to show methods of picking there patients pockets same with elder care. Health care might have improved but not anywhere near the astronomical cost increase and in the end you still end up dead.
Jack Welch is largely to blame for the corporate "robber baron" CEO culture of modern USA. He did "great violence to the workforce" of GE. Telling that you pinpointed an ex-GE executive as when things went horribly wrong.
As I approach the end of my working life I would like to remind younger folk that you are never rewarded for loyalty. (something I realised way, WAY too late....)
Same here. I encourage everyone who has a capable brain to become self employed and reap the benefits of your hard work to build your own nest egg and fortune. I began that 25 years ago and wish I'd have done it 50 years back. If you must be a debt slave working for the almighty weekly paycheck...good luck.
I am retired. 1. Different industry. 2. First, a comment about somethings you already know. 90% of Americans die without a written estate plan. 1/2 of your lifetime medical expenses are incurred in your final illness and people do not plan for that or their retirement. 3. Bosses of companies are human. They fail to do the long term planning for a company. They don't plan for succession, promotion of employees, sale of the business or saving a reserve for a rainy day. 4. If you were born 3000 years ago and your dad was a brick maker, you became a brick maker. If your dad herded goats, you herded goats. Not true if you work at Boeing, Bank of America or a modern car company. You will have accelerated changes in business models/technology. So, if you want more control of your life, either run your own business or become an outstanding salesman because people in that occupation have the highest incomes.
I would like to tweak your assessment. “You won’t necessarily be rewarded for loyalty.” If you’re in a well run company, the virtuous loop of mutual loyalty is magical. I’ve had that situation once for about 8 years. Amazing times. But when you notice that loyalty has become one sided, adjust your expectations. Like when GE buys the company you work for. Then you’re on your own.
Let us never forget, John Barnett, 62, found dead by apparent suicide in March 2024. Barnett was a long-time employee who raised concerns about Boeing's safety and production standards. Joshua Dean, auditor, died May 2024.
I'm a Boeing retiree whose career spanned the '80s, '90s, and on into the teens. I lived the culture shift. However, when I came to the company from outside, I found Boeings production control systems to be abysmally arcane. The culture shifts came concurrently with systems updates, which were universally resisted by the middle management. They cost the company billions in the mid nineties. I think their incentives were skewed toward production schedule and quantity, at the expense of modernization. Try looking into that.
A tip for any industry, not just aviation or manufacturing in general: If your employer or one you're interviewing with tells you "we're like a family here", RUN. A well-respected capitalist in popular media once explained that one of his guiding principles was "Treat your employees like family - exploit them." They will guilt you into accepting things like lower pay, worse health benefits.. and losing your pension. NEVER TELL YOUR BOSS YOU LIKE YOUR JOB. NEVER BE LOYAL TO A COMPANY. As far as they are concerned, you should make them think you hate your job and will leave if things don't go right. Even that anti-labor lunatic Henry Ford knew that he had to pay his workers enough to buy the cars they're building.
How do you figure Henry Ford was anti-labor? He seems to be one of the only ones at the time that understood the value of labor, unlike Dodge bros. and their stockholders.
This reminds me of a saying I heard from a man who taught a project management course that I took back in the late 80s or early 90s. He was talking about people who complain about how bad their employer is, but who lack the courage to go get a better job if their current job is so bad. I probably am not remembering his saying exactly, but it was something like this: “Your employer employs you because they think you are worth more to them than you cost in salary and benefits. You stay with your employer because you know they are wrong.” Think about it.
Sounds like a pretty narrow-minded and facile way to dismiss anyone who complains about their job. There are plenty of reasons why an employee might choose to stay at a particular job which have nothing to do with their own esteemed value.
@@LTVoyager, your philosophy is on par with "have you considered you could just stop being poor?" The badly hidden assumption is that there are always better jobs available.
@ Absolutely. I grew up just above what most call “dirt poor.” I was the first in my family to go to college. I worked all summer, working during college breaks and worked 20 hours a week during each semester to help pay for it in addition to maxing out loans. It absolutely is a decision most people make to be poor and dependent or to be financially secure and independent. I say “most” as obviously there are people with mental or physical handicaps that don’t have that choice, but for 95% or more of Americans, it is absolutely a choice to be poor or to stay in a bad job.
@@LTVoyager lol typical boomer-brain getting so high off your own supply that you can't see the current world around you, which is vastly different than the one you were privileged to be born into.
Treating their employees decently, instead of trying to stiff them as a way of raising executive bonuses, would have had Boeing making a lot more money, instead of bleeding cash for decades. I work in this space, and the idea of moving to Boeing is a running joke. "Well you could always work at Boeing!"
Funny. I got an offer to work for Boeing subsidiary (software division). It was by far lowest offer I got in quite some time. So your words is exactly what I'm thinking when having worse day at work: "I could always work for Boeing".
@@adaslesniak I could detail exactly how I know Boeing is in deep shit internally, but that would be an essay. They don't have the internal expertise to control subcontractors, much less to do it themselves.
Employee loyalty died when Companies started rewarding it with lower wages, and cutting benefits and pensions/401k, cutting back on sick pay and PTO and other similar things. All decisions made by people at the top making hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars per year and setting up extremely generous retirement or severance packages for themselves. God knows the place I work now might not be one of these multibillion giants ( I think we're around the $2 billion mark ) but they keep talking about how good the company is doing during our townhall meetings they insist we sit through ( which is usually 10 minutes of information stretched out to fill a 2 hours meeting ) even though they also aren't giving us a bonus this year, nor a cost of living increase, and annual raises are projected to be almost non existant too. But hey, the board and shareholders are doing great, so yay!
Don't worry. When it's good times it's CEO that made it, when there will be hard days it will be workers fault do they will finally adjust your compensation to new marker reality.
Apparently he isn’t actually a pilot anymore because he ended up making more money from his UA-cam channel so now it would be slightly hypocritical for him to wear it. But that was a recent change. In the beginning he did actually wear it (minus a few features such as his work ID and lanyard but that’s understandable.) It was actually his uniform that enabled me to identify what airline he flew for-it’s all in the little details. The colour, stitching, and distance between the stripes on the shoulder epaulettes, the colour scheme of the tie and sometimes the shade of the trousers and jacket-some airlines make them navy blue instead of black. The airlines like to stamp their colours on as many things as possible. 😆 It’s a weird side effect of working around pilots from different airlines every shift. They all look the same at first but after a few weeks I started noticing the differences. (Not that I disagree with you. My BF looks absolutely adorable in his uniform, but I digress…) Anyway while admittedly I’m speculating here, but I’m pretty sure that he stopped wearing his uniform for UA-cam videos so that he could wear a copy of the shirts that he sells as merchandise. A bit of old fashioned product placement advertising. But I don’t think my speculation is incorrect.
One of our local companies merged with another one that was failing. Within a year, Execs from the failed company took over the successful one and in just a couple years managed to bankrupt both. Sounds pretty familiar. with Boeing/McD merger
I worked for Air Rhodesia, then SAA through the eighties and was at work 7 days a week. It wasn't a problem! I worked 11 hours a day except weekends, when I worked 8. The problem is that these people want more for less. Life's tough! Get used to it and all your problems go away.Hard work never hurt anyone.Stop bitchin about what you don't have and focus on what you can do with what you have. I'm 63 and still put in a 72 hour week
The story of Boeing is basically the story of postwar America. We survived all these hardships together for decades only to be stabbed in the back by the "management" of our country in the 80s and 90s, and now that there's so little loyalty, conflict is inevitable.
My girlfriend's mom worked as a Boeing tool store manager. She would talk about stoned, braindead machinists come to her and essentially have no idea how to use their own tools for their work. She was let go last week after 35 years. Living in Washington between Renton and Everett, it used to be a pride to work there, now it's more of a shameful admission. But this area has other reasons to be depressed. There's very little community here, so you either need family or go to bars for anyone to talk to you. It wouldn't surprise me if there's further decay, the foundations that this area has always lacked are now fully making their impact known.
That's a good question. With hourly rates going up on one side of the country, it would make sense for workers elsewhere to expect some sort of wage increase, unions or no unions... we'll see!
The workers in SC will benefit from the strike. Boeing knows if they maintain the status quo there in regards to pay and benefits that will increase the chances of the IAM moving into BSC.
They better, After the UAW settled their contracts with Ford, GM and Stellantis (Chrysler), the two NON-union major auto makers (Toyota and Tesla) immediately raised wages.
I really liked the take on your whole boeing issue in this video. It was fair. I've seen way too many youtube videos and medias trying to shame the workers for striking. Saying they're greedy. And they're the ones destroying the company. When they have no idea what Boeing management been doing for decades and their pay is really low. Especially at a high cost living area like seattle. As an aviation technician myself in a major airline, I was amazed at their pay level. If you're in the big 3 major airline, you're starting off near $40. Topping out at high $60's. AA just ratified their contract and in 4 years they'll be topped off at low 70's. UAL techs are negotiating their contract right now and big chance they'll follow suit. Delta always just rides on union's back and follows pay +1$ to keep the union out so they'll follow soon as well. :D What they were asking for is not out of the ordinary. Like you mentioned inflation hit this generation hard. Everyone at the execs level in boeing got a raise but wanted to keep paying the actual workers who build planes the same for years or less. Taking away pension away by blackmailing workers saying its that or you lose your job all together by sending the production to other state. Of course workers got pissed off and led to this strike...
You get it, Petter! The Puget Sound has become extremely expensive. One now former Boeing worker I know very well had worked for the company for many years. Some of the plants in the Seattle area are separated by about 60 miles. This guy’s commute was from a home near Boeing’s Frederickson facility to Everett, taking him through the heart of Seattle. I think he had to show up in Everett at around 0630, so he avoided traffic, pretty much. But he had an affordable house near Frederickson. Everything is expensive everywhere around Boeing’s facilities: Microsoft employees have driven up the costs. And, yes, there used to be multi-generational Boeing families. My wife’s mother and grandmother were among them. Most Boeing employees I’ve known now, including a brother-in-law, hate working there. He’s now retired and couldn’t leave soon enough. The excesses and greed, and horrific screw-ups of Boeing management have ruined the attitudes and esprit de corps of its workforce.
A lot of these CEOs, seeing what they say in candid moments, really sound like they just want to bring back the days where they can "pay" workers in company scrip.
The damage one forced strike can do isn't immediately obvious. I've seen dedicated workers, glad to put in extra effort when needed, converted to "they pretend to pay me, I pretend to work". Everyone loses over the long run.
Being a former Boeing employee we had a motto, "If it's BOEING I'm NOT Going". The place is a giant toilet and heaven help you if you get injured on the job or mis speak to the wrong person, It's like working in an old decrepid prison where Boeing want's you to come to work, leave your brain at the door and pick it up when you go home. I worked in Metal Fab Hammer Shop where the newest piece of equipment was dated 1966! Boeing manufacturing in Seattle is broken down into hundreds of individual shops making parts where the motto is just get it out the door and if there is a problem let someone else worry about it because each shop has a quota to meet. In the end it was clear the Boeing Aerospace and Machinst Union was in bed with the company, they were one in the same, pushing employees to strike usually comes when deliveries are backed up and can't meet delivery dates for which there are heavy late delivery penalties EXCEPT if the workers go on strike which is the current situation.
I agree labor relations in the US need improvement. However, acting like this is unique to Boeing is disingenuous. All of these CEOs have the same background, the same education, and the same toolkit from which to return profit to investors. It's the new reality and there are a lot of places to point fingers at to include the unions. It's a very complex issue that cannot be boiled down to a 15 min video nor into one or two line UA-cam comments. Interesting take on strategic strikes to push delivery delays, never would have thought of it! (I respect your comment for the effort that went into it!)
Management always think of workers, not as an asset, but an overhead.They cannot get it into their heads that workers are tools just as much as a screwdriver or a socket.Look after your kit and it will look after you. There is no loyalty any more in firms.Often you get managers that know nothing about what they are managing.The saying that a good manager can manage anything, is complete balls.The sad part about it is, they make a balls of it, then resign,get paid off with god knows how much and get into another high paying job and bugger up that one as well.
These days the Personnel Affairs department is called HR (Human Resources). Thus objectifying humans into the equivalent of house bricks instead of living and breathing human beings.
My biggest fear out of this is that Boeing goes bankrupt (which let's be honest is very probable) and Airbus becomes a Monopoly and follow the same path as Boeing now that they have no competition. That would be disastrous
That is certainly true. But can there be loyalty with a (starting) wage of a fast food employee? I would assume, if you do not pay at least 50% more than that (as a high tech company with a very high entry barrier) ... you can not really expect or deserve quality employees.
@@TylerDurden-pk5km Loyalty can come in more forms than compensation (although thats certainly the main one). It can be as simple as not micro-managing your employees, keeping them employed through dips (assuming you have the money to do this, I realise small businesses often don't), being reasonable around letting them take leave, etc. There are certainly a subset of people who are working in roles where they could be paid more elsewhere, but they stay where they are because they feel more valued as a worker where they are.
@@nabagaca Very true, but I would say that especially if your workers perform hard monotonous work at a production line: Pay that enables at least a basic middle class lifestyle in the region you are operating in is a base condition.
A lesson for greedy CEOs, but I am afraid most of them arent listening due to personality issues. It really only long term owners that needs to take the lead
They learned their lesson, just not the one we would like. they personally came out of it very well, and the people who decide who leads the company also personally came out very well. So their lesson has been that what they have been doing works and has no consequences for them.
As a Boeing employee (but not speaking for the company), I'd say the #1 culture change we need is away from this pursuit of maximizing short-term profit for shareholders and go back to focusing on providing good, quality products. So many of Boeing problems can all be traced back to this mentality.
I have been anti union since high school and probably always will be--but I live in the South and we tend to work well without them. However, after viewing this video and knowing how I trust your judgement and analysis, I have changed my mind about the union workers of Boeing and now feel their pain.
My mutual funds advisor talked me into buying Boeing stock against my better judgment after they'd put themselves back together from the MCAS crashes and scandal, but as soon as i heard about that door blowout I called her up and said, "Sell. I don't care what the experts say, there's going to be a coverup." I didn't realize yet just how horribly they were treating their workers. I don't want to invest in that kind of company either although it's hard to avoid these days. If they want to keep their investors, they should be willing to look after their workers too. socially responsible investing is becoming a thing now.
*long post* There is no reason to work at Boeing anymore. making less than 30$ a hour for 6 years until you "max out" is causing people to leave at the 2-4 year mark. Why would employees want to come back? You can take your 401k anywhere. Any other company in a related field will have good medical too. The business model of "anyone can do this job" is extremely reckless. Looking at all the incidents with Boeing( even though non of them involved the actual union workers), a revolving door employment strategy is not ideal. Boeing is Complex manufacturing and keeping a workforce and wanting the workforce to come back is going to be paramount to Boeing's success. The IAM751 understood this and that is why they fought for the pension back. Now that Kelly is laying off the workforce I put into question the recover plan once skilled labor in the IAM is hit. The changes that need to be made need to happen and fast. Importantly not rushing production, but slowing down and solving issues that are consistently popping up. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Finnish postal service (a state-owned corporation) also has that same business model. I heard that one lady, when her mail had been misdelivered (there were two identical blocks of flats next to each other), told the postman that she is a registered nurse, and if she did her job like that, she'd be in prison.
Hedge funds etc should not be able to have a say in the way companies operate that they invest in. They drive them down and bleed them dry and simply move on
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Petter, Your analysis is spot on! It's very thorough.
The real problem is Boeing is incapable of making a safe plane. I'm happy the employees are getting a better deal, but it doesn't change the future coffins already in service. If it's Boeing, I ain't going.
You need to research how to pronounce the word stabilise correctly... 😉
The Democrats are starting World War III. That’s their agenda to stop Trump.
You know what else was probably inevitable? Being out on strike for two months and there being layoffs down the line.
Thanks Petter. As a Boeing engineer with over 27 years with the company, think your analysis and observations are spot-on. I see Boeing's slow and very public downfall as analogous to a 737 MAX with MCAS prior to the fixes. The employees (pilots) see the plane starting to go down and try to correct it. The company management (MCAS) says, "nothing wrong here, we're going to keep pushing the nose down and there's nothing you can do about it". The pilots pull back harder, but the plane keeps overriding them until eventually Boeing is just a smoking hole in the US economy.
I received my layoff notice last week. For me, it's really just an early forced retirement, as I was going to retire next year anyway. I'm just glad I'm getting off this ride before it totally breaks down. It's just not fun anymore.
Westjet have just changed my flight from a direct 787 flight to an indirect flight on 737 MAX 8, and there is no way in hell I am boarding that aircraft on a short haul, let alone transatlantic from Scotland to Canada.
King I worked for HEXEL. as security guard. They had more than internal issues. They had to close campus building due to spiritual issues. And we had to secure the building. U can ask questions still the strange activity going on. Just do your job watch the people and building. When you need back up call front.
@ZeoRDz You know Dreamliner is not particularly safe either? Haven't you been listening to all the whistlblowers? Of course the new aircrafts Boeing is now producing are safe, no matter which type, as safety control has been tightened.
To be fair they want to get rid of the olds so they can be replaced by younger Indians who will work for less.
Enjoy your retirement! Youve got a great atitude, clearly youre another example of Boeings Loss.
I’ll never forgive Jack Welch. I’m not a religious person, but if hell exists there’s a special seat just for him. He and his cronies poisoned and destroyed everything they touched. And they’re still sitting back in their air conditioned offices as their company bleeds to death and their workers are depressed and miserable.
Agree totally, then you see the McKinsey company doing the same thing, destroying companies worldwide. Short sighted profit hunger, pure greed.
I was thinking the exact same thing. It’s too bad I don’t believe in hell… there should be a special place for all these executives that are happy to ruing the lives over thousands of others… so they can get cushy bonuses. All while complaining that “workers these days don’t care.” We can thank the greatest generation for this. Once they made it to the top the corporate world. Their generation mostly retired with pensions… yet they started the whole sale destruction for future generations … so they could enjoy more bonuses. During the Reagan years they setup the destruction of future people middle class. :-(
I'm sure he can be given a one way ticket on a 737 MAX to there.
@Marinealver short-sighted tactics and obsession with downsizing, outsourcing, dealmaking, and shareholder primacy single-handedly destabilized the middle class. Walsh has influenced generations of CEOs with similar short-sighted ambitions who continue to destroy livelihoods and increase inequality to this day, he never cared about the "product" only profits.
Maybe his seat will be right next to the door plug that may or may not blow out
Meanwhile... huge bonuses for Boeing executives are still a thing...
Yeah, that will never change: management keeps on failing, yet keeps getting rewarded for their failures until a company goes bust.
Boeing is in cash out while we can mode.
Capitalism can be healthy, but corruption never is.
Economic terrorism.
@@picjw Capitalism CAN be healthy, but only if its being held accountable by oversight. Which is the problem in the US, as both parties are at war over this. The Democrats want oversight, the Republicans want unbridled capitalism. I'd say that thusfar the Republicans have gotten what they wanted more than the Democrats and the result is that many small businesses have been raided and put out of existence and big corporations have grown incredibly corrupt and are rotten to the core.
It's not just Boeing, it's pretty much all manufacturing in the USA. I worked for a Scandinavian owned company in the US, and it was a great place to work. It was difficult work with tight deadlines, but the employees took pride in their work and we made a great product. The customers were very happy. Then a US conglomerate bought the company and within 3 months they completely destroyed the company culture, treated the employees like garbage, and people started leaving in droves. I was one of them. Quality went downhill fast with the replacement workers, and customers were not happy. They shifted production to Mexico, but the quality was so bad they had to move production again to China. It was a death spiral. The entire conglomerate went bankrupt a few years later.
And the scumbags running the conglomerate probably walked away with a bag full of money.
@@darkwing3713 that is a given
I am interested to know the root problem that led to that happening.
@davidvanderklauw All I know is that it was a great company to work for before the sale. After the sale went through, the new corporate owner cleaned house of the old managers and put new ones in. The new managers had no clue about the manufacturing aspect of the products, treated employees like shit, and made promises that were never kept. We were told if we didn't like it, we could leave. So a lot of us found other jobs and left.
@@TheLexluthier Corporate culture is just garbage these days.
Great to see so many Boeing employees past and present in the comments. PLS keep talking about the problems. The flying public is depending on you. ❤
I feel like the Boeing story is a microcosm of the general labour market in many countries - real wages have stagnated for decades whilst the top echelons continue to award themselves higher and higher pay.
Absolutely correct. It's the same here in the UK and probably across the EU. Greed makes you dumb.
Couldn't have said it better
It is all that "smile curve" 🐎💩 that is taught at colleges that says manufacturing is less important than marketing & sales.
Yeah I saw some video on youtube of a guy who researches companies and CEOs talking about boeing being the poster child of the downfall of essentially what all companies are doing right now and I find it easy to agree. Poor CEO management style started by the GE CEO in the 90's or something, trading the future for an extra dollar today.
While it is true to some extent in many countries, this effect is more marked in the US than anywhere else. Pretty well all the benefits of economic growth in the last 40 years the US have gone to the top 1%. It explains the anger of blue collar workers which leads them to turn to fascism.
I’m a Quality Assurance Inspector in the Renton plant and I can tell you first hand it’s a freaking mess. First line managers with the mentality of quantity over quality. Just push push push push. They pressure the machinists to do the wrong thing without directly telling them to cut corners. The quality of workers we have is abysmal as after the two 737’s crashed and Boeing had to layoff due to the plane being grounded then Covid swept the globe Boeing was hurting. When they started to recall workers late 2021 only a fraction came back. Leaving Boeing no other option other then lowering the barrier of entry hiring literally anyone that applied. No aerospace background, no machinist background, no anything. We have mechanics that don’t know how to properly hold power tools let alone use them. It’s scary. What kind of talent is Boeing going to get when if you have an aerospace background you definitely aren’t applying at Boeing to make $21 an hour then only get $1 dollar raises each year on top of waiting 6 years to max out pay.. The morale is low in the workers. We are underpaid, undertrained, and got screwed again on this latest contract negotiation. The FAA is not doing enough in my opinion. Even with their presence in the factory. Come talk to the workers. See how much they don’t know when mechanics do not know how to find engineer drawings or find the proper applicable specs that have the right torque value for the job they are trying to perform. It’s so scary. It’s only a matter of time..
My brother worked as a mechanic for an airline I will not name, and later left and even started an entirely new business on his own because he hated feeling "rushed" on jobs. He did not want to sign off on work he didn't feel completely comfortable with. I will point out he is older than me and made his career change in the early 90s.
Hiring standards are horrible (I'm not saying an A&P should be required for the factory) but they do just pull people basically off the streets.
But the lack of care is massive inside the factory, and the management (and workers) inside don't help the cause. Countless repeat issues are found out on the line, that gets reported and seemingly nothing is done about it. It'd take no effort at all to do a little bit of digging to find the employees who rubber stamp jobs (QAs who don't bother to look at a job to see it's complete) and the workers who just say something is done because they likely know that the system gets checked further down the line and it'll be found.
Prior to the strike 10 separate planes didn't have the FO Oxy box actually connected, went to run Crew Oxy and it just started leaking from the box. Those are only the planes I know of and considering they came out at separate times likely means there were way more. People like that need fired.
Don’t know if it’s a coincidence.
there appears to be some connection between Boeing employees that speak up and potential lower life expectancy.
@@TheGLORY13
No A&P? (I had to look that up). Surely workers on something as complex as aircraft manufacture must all (or nearly all) have professional trade qualifications?
What’s the situation at Airbus? In Europe or US?
I knew a worker from one of the Airbus factories around Toulouse - highly qualified (including lots of internal training).
So you are saying the education system in the US that is catering to teacher's unions and pushing the notion that one must borrow money from the government to obtain graduate degree is the problem? The education system has failed to recognize the need for highly skilled blue collar workers and an effort should be made to promote their training along with messaging that this is a viable career path when compared to getting a poly sci or gender studies degree? Either we really care as a nation about maintaining manufacturing jobs in the US, or we don't. So far it looks like we don't.
I blame modern MBA schooling and it's flawed view that labor is simply interchangeable, rejecting the value of any skilled labor as simply greedy employees.
That scapegoat is too small and overly simplistic. The bigger problem is the American attitude that corporation owners and executives are entitled to more of the pie than workers, and that anything to make your pie bigger and others' smaller is OK. It's when people who aren't rich promote these values like they're temporarily poor millionaires that their cognitive dissonance and self-deception kicks into overdrive.
100% the MBA's to blame. All they teach is to squeeze the workforce and screw the customer for a little more margin. Short term gain for the shirts that destroys companies. Useless middlemen are destroying everything and being richly rewarded for it.
Jack Welch has much to answer for.
@@dpawtowsJack Welch or Jack Wrench?
I throw resumes with an MBA on the straight into the trash.
I have worked union and non-union jobs In my career, and all of the successful companies that were good to work for all had two things in common: Good management who were honest with you, and a fairly flat hierarchy that encouraged communication and cooperation across all departments between workers and management.
There is an old adage in unions: "If employers pay and treat you fairly, there is no reason for a union."
It always adds insult to injury when workers see how much the company would rather lose to a strike than use it to pay for their workers.
When a company goes bad, the fix is to form a Union.
What's the solution when a Union goes bad?
i myself was a QA at Boeing for dreamliner & the moment they just start hiring anybody w/ no experience was never good. Especially when they cut the quality control I knew the company is going down. Half my fam still works there im a nurse student now. I just had our annual meeting & our company is growing & I luv my bosses!! Amazing people!
@@Marinealver I feel like there is no fix for a bad union. I feel like we saw it with the I.L.A situation a couple of months ago. Unions are supposed to use collective bargaining to demand what is fair for employees. However I feel like I’m the I.L.A. situation instead of demanding what’s fair theu demand whatever the hell they want and try to hold supply chains hostage. Unions have their place if used correctly but let’s not pretend they’re a bunch of angels working for unions.
Boeing is the US in miniature. Starting the the 70s, businesses decided to put profits first, the tinkle-down economy. This is the exact opposite of what made the US the economic leader.
Trump will fix it, for sure. * sarcasm off *
@@tangiblewaves9730 Yep. Anyone who thinks Trump can fix our morbid economy must still believe in Santy Claus.
Boeing:
Where "Doing more with less"
means, "I get more. You get less."
Very bad yes
More work with less pay lol
That’s exactly what that “slogan” means everywhere. Anyone who says these three words is an instant walking red flag.
@KasabianFan44 Yup yup yup
Thats a stupid logic . No employee's no work force no product ! .
The idea that the starting pay for people building aircraft could be similar to that of a barista or Amazon warehouse employee is absolutely mind-boggling.
And you wonder why they are barely still flying due to people under 25 treating it as if it is their first job? The quality control from what I have been reading elsewhere online, and on forums, is abysmal. That guy overseas who is cleaning used guitars with a brush and a garden hose meme bad. 1980s Yugo bad. I'd honestly not fly in one of their planes built since Covid.
In Italy a skilled aerospace machinist will get 14 or 15 an hour if lucky and I know for sure we are subcontracting for Boeing in some of our aerospace industries, I wonder why
Makes you want to stay on the ground!😬
Thats a bullshit argument because after 4 years of exp, operators could be making $110K+ with all their OT and no degree. (This is more than our early/early mid career engineers) Tell me where else you could get a job like that. Boeing also pays for an LTP program that is a free bachelor degree so you can get an engineering degree later down the line with no pay back at all. If you want to work at Dicks burgers or Starbucks you can go ahead but I can tell you that there is no career progression in those roles when you decide to eventually leave. Compared to if you worked as an operator and became an engineer or a A and P mechanic. You would have the ability to read engineering drawings, know how to navigate niche software that requires specialized training, be able to read part diagrams/ drawings etc and also have a brand name on your resume.
Also the operators voted away their own pension and got a 38% salary increase over 4 years Idk why they are mad at boeing.
@@Ahfuric That might have been true, and that was the point in the video. I agree with you that's the way it was. I remember as a young engineer seeing guys selling used car making more than me... because I was in training. But what good does it do you if you are fired after 2 years because the CEO decided to sub out the production to China?
"you wouldn't believe what Boeing would do to their employees"
Eh .. we can hazard a guess
you won t belive what Boing does to its former employees talking about BLAM!
Yes I would ! Now retired after therty seven years from Defense & Space.
@Monsterpala pop! Pop! Watching whistles drop
I clicked to add "unless it's 'gave them a huge pay rise because it was the right thing to do', I'm pretty sure I'd believe it."
LOL I was thinking the same thing. haha
This isn't just a Boeing problem, it's a corporation problem. The world DESPERATELY needs corporate reform.
Private equity firms, board members and shareholders are the cause of the imbalance in corporate America. Stock price is the #1 priority....Employee pay and morale are at the very bottom. Also making hefty sums are the union executive leaders. I was once a shop steward for IAM. Unions don't care about employees in the traditional sense. They only see their own dollar signs and bonuses for long term contracts.
Only reasonable way to achieve that seems to be mass unionization of different feilds. Otherwise there is no incentive for these corperations to get better.
"The world" absolutely doesn't, the US does. Don't lump us all together with the lowest of the low.
@ArmadaOne these corperations have the same shitty incentives no matter where they are headquartered. The only thing that changes is their increased ability to steamroll their works in poorer areas. Unionization is the only real way we can push back on this, coperations have already paid off all of the political parties.
@@ArmadaOne I'm Canadian. We definitely do.
I am an Australian trades person , I was making $21 an hour in 1990! When I retired six years ago I was making $55 an hour , so much for the American dream.
Doesn't that work out to about $20/hr with the exchange rate?
@@JHe-f9t That is AU dollars earned and spent here in OZ , the exchange rate is not applicable.
@@JHe-f9t $50 au is $ 32 US$ however it is not applicable because we are comparing dollars earned and spent in AU to dollars earned and spent in the US. US hourly rates are incredibly low compared to AU and most of the developed world. That is why everybody is struggling and why the country keeps being flooded by Illegals to keep wages low.
Australia GDP 1.7 TRILLION and the USA GDP 24 TRILLION 😂 just saying.
Right, so that means Australia makes 5 times more money per citizen than the US.
My father was a manager at the Boeing Renton plant working there from 1978 to 2004. He was Director of Quality Assurance and Customer Warranty. The culture in the company has totally flipped and you are 100% correct in your assessment of the current Boeing Company. So sad. 👎🏻
That's what a QA manager just in the comments above
I believe your comments and perspective are set on. Tank you.
There you go that's the problem, "quality assurance managers"; didn't have any good vibes or conversations at all from Everett to Renton and Boeing field! Yes I worked at lazy B!
They rather waste billions of dollars than give a decent meaning wage increase. These are the people make the company RUN, not management. I’m so tired of seeing management screwing the workers in this country while getting all the bonuses and raises instead.
Move to North Korea....
Yeah, the job of management is to enable the workforce, not control it. Managers work for the workers, not the other way round.
At our last staff meeting, we were informed about Boeing's new program where they will be putting cameras around their buildings.. watching cubes, watching conference rooms, watching hallways, and feeding all that data into a new machine learning system to determine building utilization.
Massive waste of money....but some ATF is likely getting promoted because of their project.
Some of us are going through same situation in the hospitality industries
@@neeneko Wow, if any company in Europe did that, that would be an immediate strike untill the person making that decision is fired!
I couldn’t agree more Petter. The saying these days is ‘there is no point in being loyal to your employer because the employer is not loyal to the employee’. But for our parents and grandparents, it was the opposite.
Isn't it obvious? Bosses are not friends. Job is necessary evil. You are there only because you didn't find anything better and they anyone cheaper. So do your minimum effort 8 hours, go back to you life and forget about them untill next day.
@@Sicarius888Work is always going to be work, but it’s a hell of a lot more bearable when each employee knows that they’re all pushing in the same direction for a larger purpose.
On every corporate balance sheet "payroll" is reflected as a liability.
@@Sicarius888 It's hard to really understand for newer generations, but back then, before the world was connected by the internet, things moved a lot slower and were a lot more localized. The business that stayed open were the ones that were loyal to their employees. Don't get me wrong, the companies still made the big bucks, but workers benefited from mutual loyalty. Getting job security in an economy that suffered 2 world wars and a depression.
@@JFJD It really isn't more bearable. We all knew we are all pushing in the same direction. And that direction was another exotic car or mansion for our bosses. I quit and started my own 1 person company and working for yourself is the only way to care.
Maybe it was different once, but now employees are just disposable tools that all companies exploit and discard because there are always more of them.
I was thinking of joining Boeing after being the the military (aviation mechanic and flight engineer) of 25 years. I was offered $20 an hr. and would have to work swing shift. It took me a long time to decide that, because of strikes and the McDonnell merger, this might not be the job for me. It's kinda sad, really, how screwed up this company has become.
Boeing’s story is the story of so much of corporate America in the last 40 years: continuing to demand loyalty from workers while offering none in return. We’ve had a brief window where organized labor has shown more strength than at any time since before Reagan, but I do not expect that to continue. Replacing the most union friendly administration of my lifetime with one openly hostile even to the basic premise of collective bargaining doesn’t strike me as a move that will help labor. Given that, I think the machinists got the best deal done that they could, and just in time.
Replacing pensions with 401k’s was always about getting some part of the workforce to think stock prices mattered more in their lives than wages, benefits, job security, and working conditions; it will take a larger culture change than just one strike to make pensions come back, over a period of many years. Given the impatience of the American voting public it’s hard to imagine that kind of sustained pressure ever taking shape, and that’s if Leon doesn’t find a way to outlaw unions altogether.
Any time anyone talks about loyalty you know you're being screwed.
Yup, loyalty in corporate speak always goes one way and means "work your a** off for a pittance and thank us on your knees for the experience and for not firing your a** while we reap massive profits."
A boss who I once had started using the euphemism "the professional day" - meaning everyone should be working extra hours for free. He was displeased with me pointing out that doing something for money makes you a professional while doing something for free makes you an amateur. I work somewhere now where I do care about what we do and the culture is great so they don't have to think up phrases to persuade me to put in extra when it's needed.
@@ACCPhil Yeah, that's a tried and trusted tactic many bosses use. My partner always went all out in her probation time whenever she was hired and I've always called her a fool for it. But the moment you give them more than they pay you for, they expect you to do it when you're hired as well. You simply can't walk that back.
"loyalty", "family", all corpo BS.
I prefer to have temporary contracts paid by the hour.
If you value my work, you pay for it.
Loyalty used to make sense. I think companies wanted to limit union activity, so they did their own employee pensions. So you might be able to work for a company that employed you for your entire career, retrained you when they needed to, and gave you a pension. And in return you tried to do a good job, made sacrifices during hard times, encouraged your kids to work there, and even voted the way your company wanted.
The Reagan administration ended this, and now companies try to trick, bully, and manipulate their employees into being loyal.
As a software engineer, started recently to work for a US company(having worked ~10 years for European companies) and these guys treat their employees like slaves: no concept of free/personal time(was even asked once to enter a meeting at 03:00 AM and then were disgruntled that I refused), constantly remind employees that they don’t like when they take vacations, etc… The Germans expected you to respect their personal time(can’t contact 30 minutes before work day ends) and they respected yours
In the US you don't work to live, you live to work
I guess it is an overall cultural trait.
@@MLennholm I was a shift manager (salary) at a factory for a fortune 500 company. I chose to work every other weekend. I was passed over for a promotion because "I didn't come in enough on the weekends". I'd get in at 5am, and my boss would be at his desk. I'd leave at 7pm, and my boss would still be at his desk. Cost him his marriage but he got promoted. American work culture is sick.
Lmao wait until you see Chinese tech companies, or any other Asian based tech companies. One rest day every 2 weeks, 12 hr mandatory working per day (no extra wage since this is not considered overtime), and only 12-13 days per year for national holidays.
@@cadevywilliams3501sounds like an absolute hell hole.
Bill Boeing would be ashamed of what the company he founded has become
Even his first successor too
I guess English is not your first language. @@flightandfind
Bill Allen too. Allen was a simple man who ran the company with a no-nonsense, no-frills attitude. He did not provide any of the executives with limo services or private jets because he believed it was important for them to stay connected to their employees and customer base.
Contrast that with Dave Calhoun who was spending company money to go on vacation.
@@AK4SHGamingFlid.
Not to mention his German father Wilhelm Böing.
Holy crap these planes are being assembled by workers getting worse pay than warehouse workers? Is the C-suite completely insane? The shareholders need to kick them out.
Ideally we would kick the shareholders out as well, making Boeing employee-owned. Socialist utopia, I know, but at the moment the alternative is watching American planes fall apart in mid-air and perhaps also the company shutting down outright.
They can go work for Amazon and see how that works out!
I have a hunch the shareholders are a large factor why the suits were cutting costs, including treating workers worse and worse.
Sorry, but the shareholders are too busy counting the money.
It's not just Boeing. All jobs in the US are paying about half of what they paid a generation ago. Except for government workers. Example: Starting salary for Engineers in 1980 was about 25k$ per year. Inflation since then has been about a factor of five. So that starting salary, if it had kept up with the value of the dollar, should today be 125k$. But it's only about 60k$. Less than half. This is true across all jobs in the US.
Jack Welch has caused so much damage in the world it’s incalculable.
Agreed
I totally agree. Single handedly ruined whole economies in the west, granted with a 20-30 year delay fuse.
demon
He figured out how to take advantage of all the changes from Reagan going forward. Right now a business's only product is stock price. But change the laws, change they way they do business. If there was any way to do that anymore.
Exactly. People don't know but Welch's supposed performance is just a fake facade. In his final years for GE to make their number's they sucked money from their Munich Re insurance (reserves) side. After he left this led to Munich Re getting downgraded below investment grade and so GE had to sell them off. Thanks for your skimming and hurting a business Jack.
Top Management getting paid 20x worker wage should be more than enough. Not 500 or more.
Unless you made this a law it wouldn't work. Skilled managers would just go to companies willing to pay them high salaries, and you'd only be able to hire managers who "couldn't get a better job". Then, as soon as they got a better offer they'd leave - which hurts stability.
@@PsRohrbaugh But Boeing managers are not skilled.
The problem with these obscene pay packages is they attract grifters who are good at marketing themselves, not who are good at actually doing the job. Put another way, the wide pay band attracts the wrong kind of people into those positions.
Why? Maybe they’re 500 times more valuable? Not hard to imagine
Yeah they're so valuable that they ran the company to the ground. 😂😂 @@epursimuove1633
@@neeneko They are skilled at cutting corners and hiding when they skirt rules to save a few dollars.
When you eliminate pensions, you eliminate a big incentive for your most valued employees to stay at your company. Talk all you want about TQM, 6S, how anyone can do a job with the right instruction set, and how employees are your most valuable resource, but employee experience is priceless. Boeing wasn't the only aerospace company to learn this the hard way, but now no one wants to be the first to market with a return to employee-focused companies, so we are stuck with an unsustainable business model that benefits only the senior managers and the shareholders. It is sickening.
You forgot the biggest mess, Certified Operator. There is nothing wrong with a second set of eyes inspecting the work you just performed, well except it costs money.
Well, it costs a whole lot more when you have to send teams to the customer to repair or replace an assembly improperly installed.
Or when you have to search for pieces of wrongly assembled product that fell from the sky.
Very well put!!
Absolute bs. Pampered people
@@WayneSewellHow much did Boeing pay you to shill here?
The problem here in America is rich criminals don't get locked up. they can just buy their crimes!
Prison time is a LOT harder than just paying a million dollar fine on the company dime
@jfverboom7973 there used to it. trump showed you can just keep delaying the cases until they forget about you. Our justice system is shit cuz they don't lock up the rich!
Boeing are a dishonest company. The issue is the Boards allegiance to Wall Street. This has to change for Boeing to survive.
You gotta wonder why Wall Street is so dumb that they keep investing in a company that made a plane whose software told it to dive into the ground. And can't even figure out how to make a plane that stays in one piece. Boeing's quality control is so bad you'd think they made toilet paper.
I feel sorry for the workers at Boeing, especially considering the large compensation packages of the management team that has ruined the company. Not that it’s any consolation, but defined benefit pensions seem to be disappearing for everyone, without adequate wage compensation. It would be interesting to see a video about Airbus and whether it has a corporate culture similar to what Boeing used to have.
@rolf7135 every time I see Boeing screwing up I keep thinking "when's the news on airbus gonna break?" Pretty morbid, but I think no one will take a serious look at them until their planes start falling from the sky.
@@owangejewicethey won't, they're not boing
@@owangejewiceairbus is still in large parts owned by the governments of France, Germany, and Spain. For them Airbus is more of a prestige project than a money maker, so you don’t see the same cost cutting/profits over safety culture as with Boeing.
@@owangejewice I don't think so; Airbus appears to have more control. I expect it to perform as Boeing once did. Additionally, the management compensation package seems healthier. I have a very positive impression of Airbus.
@@MustNotContainSpaces I think you’re absolutely right. I hope they perform better than Boeing did. Aviation seems to be an industry where Europe has a slight competitive edge.
These problems are symptomatic of a bigger problem in the United States and many parts of the world. Workers don't make livable wages but executives and investors take home millions in pay and bonuses.
Then become an executive or an investor. Problem solved.
@@cirilloucazzu4457 I am worried about you. Please seek mental help.
@@cirilloucazzu4457 I am an investor (through stocks) - but still can't see how the Boeing strategy should produce high returns.
Would have been more productive to pay works 50% more - and not fuck up almost all programs and waste billions upon billions.
The most valuable and high yielding companies do not become so, through penny pinching workers - that is a bottom feeder strategy.
@cirilloucazzu4457 Yup. Who needs workers, right? Everyone should become one. 🥱
@@theestorestlucia Reading (comprehension) is fundamental. I didn’t say everyone should become an exec or investor. The point is we all have choices; if you choose to become a worker bee knowing what the compensation is, that’s a choice-not a mandate. “The man is keeping me down” is a rather tired trope and an unpersuasive argument. If you don’t like what “the man” is offering, do something else.
When i started my career, there was still mutual loyalty between workers and company. Of the years that faded and what made it hit home was the year that the company was at risk of not making the quarterly numbers, thereby threatening executive bonuses. The solution was to lay off enough workers to make the numbers work. The executives got their bonuses and the workers got more work. Fortunately, I was able to retire last year. I cant imagine how bad things will get before they get better.
Any halcyon days of mutual respect and loyalty are probably fond re-invention, but, even if briefly true, were the aberration. The enmity between labor and capital has always been present with both sides feeling aggrieved and exploited. Now, I know which side I favor in this debate...
What an easy gig! To be able to simply fire some workers to "make" some numbers and then get a bonus for that. That is amazing. Who were the people who decided to offer such a gig? And who did they decide to offer it to?
That’s the problem with the current capitalism culture: everything is only about profits and nothing is about building and maintaining a successful, stable and long lasting company anymore. Everything is about short term profits and managers and investors are blind to long-term sustainability.
To fix that, I think we would need to decouple investors from any company decisions, as well as to make short term investments unattractive by heavily taxing them, for example if stocks are sold earlier than after 5 to 10 year holding time.
Yes, activist investors are a disaster. These days "Made in the USA" means stay away. All their strategies are just a race to the bottom - they basically ruin businesses. And lives too. I've read that rail car inspections went from a 90 point check to a 9 point check. For cars carrying pressurized fuel! Insane.
Yes. Change the law, change the management/shareholder incentives.
I worked as a visiting engineer at Boeing in 1979-80 (on the 767) and 1991-92 (on the 777) and the engineers (who uniquely were also unionized) seemed quite happy. Alan Mulally was the program head on the 777 and gave all program people a pocket card with 21 program goals, the last of which said "Have Fun"! I think that, as you suggest, that the McDonnell Douglas acquisition was the time things began to go downhill.
I retired from Boeing in 23’ after 35 years plus. I was flightline QA on 777 and 767. The culture over the years became toxic. By the end of my time I just didn’t want to be there anymore. What used to be an exciting job was now a daily slog filled with new hoops and bullshit rules that served no one. Boeing allowed fringe groups to call the shots on the means of production. ie safety, auditors
The delivery and flying schedules remained the same. Poor quality from the factory and suppliers alike put further pressure on. Yes the merger didn’t help but Boeing started changing in the years leading up to it.
I worked at Boeing also in California. While the execs were certainly greedy it was also the politicians that killed the company. Inventing new taxes for everything they could think of, dictating what kind of work we could do, and, the worse, telling us who to hire. I think a lot of the execs saw the writing on the wall and decided to cash out while they could. You can't work in such a business hostile environment.
5 years at Boeing made me NEVER want to have anything to do with the aviation industry anymore.
Before that I was a Jet Engine mechanic in the Marine Corps for 13 years.
Antone ever go postal on the production floor when pushed too far? Did the plants have security?
My stepfather was an engineer for Boeing during the 60's and early 70's, I know he took great pride in that.
Thank you for your service
I would be really proud of being a Boing engineer. Too bad they were not still running the company. This is so sad!!
He should. In that era, aerospace engineers knew their stuff! They had to. Computers were there and capable, but limited to some necessary users.
Everyone else worked from drawings and needed to have a solid understanding of the tasks as well as the aircraft in general.
The same could be said for the people building the Gemini and Apollo space programs. Literal rocket scientists able to build engines that performed to spec despite manufacturing variations.
They would do the math and adapt to the work in progress, each engine a unique work in some ways.
Was a great era to be in engineering. Those people pushed tech forward with deliberate intent, seeking to be the beat!
You're pretty much outlining the decline of the United States as a whole.
%100
I agree. I retired from a healthcare system after 32 yrs. Many changes with everything being outsourced and no more nuns running the place. Mergers everywhere with other healthcare systems. You loose the culture you once had. All the fun perks went away years ago.
Healthcare is an enormous mess in the U.S. as well as Americans not wanting to be responsible living a healthy lifestyle and expecting too much from the healthcare system to fix them.
No, what he is outlining is how the US is an oligarchy. After the last election, it will only get worse. The working class just f*cked itself.
Vicious cycles of under-regulated greed combined with increasing corruption (incl. regulatory capture) and decreasing education. If you want a stable society, you gotta have sufficient (democratic) socialism (investment) and substantive oversight of corporations that can't be bought, politicized, or trimmed by DOGE.
It's happening in Europe too. It's the rise of the MBA, late stage capitalism eating itself to make a few useless dummies rich.
When you get rid of the employees that know and have solved all the contruction problems you had, you end up with people that have no clue what they are doing.
I completely missed this strike. Almost like the media was paid to ignore the story.
it's a big Oligarchy and YOU aint in it!
Speaking as a former GE employee, yeah, they sucked bad to work for. Fortunately, they sold the entire water division to a French conglomerate that was so much better for us.
The one single good thing that came out of GE owning the company I work for was that we did get a defined benefit pension, that is still in place and I will be collecting from once I reach 65. It's not much as GE discontinued offering the pension, first to new employees, then to existing ones. You still kept what had already been contributed, but no further contributions, other than those required by law for funding purposes continued.
The phrase "tighten your belt" is quietly horrifying. It implies that you will go through a period of time where you make so little money that you begin to waste away physically as you starve to death.
Yep. That is indeed where that expression comes from, because for the vast majority of human history, that's been the harsh reality under which most people have lived. The last 80 or so years in the "west" (this will pertain to some countries in the geographical east as well... Japan, Sout Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand...), has been one most extraordinary exception.
Then again maybe going from a size 48 belt to a size 34 might not be as bad as one might imagine.
@@msromike123 That's absolute nonsense. No one should be skipping meals if they have a full time job! If you can't pay your workers at minimum a living wage you have no right to be in business.
@@Nethian78 Literal much? This metaphor wasn't directed at people literally tightening their belts because of a caloric deficit. Sheesh.
@Nethian78 if you are overweight, then yes you should be skipping some meals
As a Norwegian, when i see a Boeing aircraft I just feel sad for the workers and the future of the US. I only fly Airbus now.
Obviously
You cannot use Norwegian then at all.
@@hurri7720 No, i am only flying Scandinavian Airlines. I do have a friend flying MAX for Norwegian. Even he was nervous when he started flying the MAX some months ago. SAS is better and cheaper then Norwegian these days anyway :)
@@AnetaMihaylova-d6f yes
Then youre not supporting the workers
I can't fathom Boeing's workers getting a base pay of $21 an hour. How do you pay Amazon and McDonald's wages to your workers who are producing sophisticated aircraft averaging $250 to $400 million a unit while the company is getting numerous orders from customers averaging 10 to 30 billion dollars per order, all while the ceo gets a 29 million dollar bonus?
I can’t fathom anybody getting paid $20/hr flipping hamburgers.
The overall business environment in the U.S. has been toxic for the last 20 years. Unapologetic, uncaring, and mercenary in the extreme. Basically feudalism, except you get to choose which lord to serve as a peasant. I think we will see more strikes in the future. Workers aren't stupid. They can see the money flowing in a giant river up to the 1% up top and their wages remaining as flat as the warehouse floor they work on.
The CEO who oversaw Boeing's reputation, built over decades ruined, walked off with $60m for failure.
In Switzerland we call that „the golden parachute“. The last guy taking one has been trashtalked so hard by the public that he decided to pass on the offer. 😂😂😂
Muilenberg?
What are the names of the people who decided to offer him that pay deal? Surely they were negligent in their duty? Actually what is their duty?
And the saddest part of the story is... $60m doesn't even sound that much for CEO compensation any more compared to what current CEOs get. Things have only got worse.
Above a certain status level people just love to fail because they always fail upwards and get rewarded for it.
My spouse was an employee of an American company. His experience? You could fall over dead at work, and management at best would step over your body. At worst, you'd be kicked into a gutter so nobody else would see you or get hurt and claim injury benefits.
Employees are supposed to be grateful for jobs, and higher ups are supposed to get every dollar for shareholders, no matter what.
And over to your left is a Wells Fargo banker that has been dead for 4 days.
My husband, thank you, get rid of the woke language
Excellent recap of the changes that have occurred at Boeing. My father was an electrical engineer with Boeing military and then Boeing civilian transport. I grew up in a community where it seemed 1/2 the families worked for Boeing and it was great. As a little kid I remember the company giving out tickets for the amusement park at the Seattle Center as a perk. My father died in '72 but I still felt a loyalty to the company - having a benevolent employer creates that kind of loyalty and good will. When Boeing moved its corporate office to Chicago I was shocked and though I became a firefighter instead of working at Boeing, I felt betrayed. The change in culture from engineering and manufacturing excellence to do more with less has made me completely distanced from Boeing; now I would rather fly AirBus as the McDonell Douglas takeover ruined the company. MD bought Boeing with Boeing's own money!
Jal 123 us air 427 united 585 say it all, long be for the Md merger. now i am not saying Md was good but Boeing did it to them self's
You don't even work for them and they made you dislike them, I bet they didn't expect that kind of far reaching impact they had by being greedy.
same here. Electrician for 767 and now, I would rather fly Airbus! I traveled a lot & always concerned about quality this days..
I know a Boeing engineer who, in 1952, bought a waterfront home on Mercer Island, a nice suburb of Seattle, for $8000. His children recently sold it for $6 million. Microsoft caused housing prices to skyrocket out of this world.
Wow. I thought my family did pretty well but that Boeing engineer did great. My parents bought our second home in Houston for $23K in 1969 - I now own and live in it and the lot alone is worth $1,000,000.
Microsoft didn't cause the housing price to soar. Microsoft had been in Seattle since 1979. It was the Cali migration that started in the 1990's and has continued to this day.
@@daveb2280 In Kirkland, I sold real estate in the mid-80s, and Microsoft was making 30-year-olds instant millionaires. They were buying up everything. It was crazy. Then, the California invasion fed the fire even more.
I've worked under Ortberg. I did not find him loyal to his employees then. I see no change in his attitude.
IAM told their constituents to save up for a long strike, and many did. Boeing (McDonald Douglas actually) has been adversarial to their employees the entire 30 years (retired thank god) I worked there.
Yup
P.S. My wife's family has 4 generations of Boeing workers. Now none work there.
IMO Boeing died in the 90’s. The company today is just McDonnell Douglas with a different name.
So many corporations these days don't give a flying fart about their employees or qualities. It's always about quantity numbers stockholders and bonuses. Everything else takes a back seat. It's really pathetic
Yes sales, money and so on
Is this what capitalism really is? This is a real question. I mean it leads to this, right?
@@mapleext “Maximizing shareholder value”. Yes, unregulated capitalism will lead to short-term thinking. Look at the history of steel makers in the USA for a glimpse at the end game.
@@jacksons1010 Same in the UK. Similarly to much of the so-called "Western World", we've lost nearly all of our strategic industries because they "weren't competitive".
My reaction when I hear that Boeing lost $6bn because they refused to give their workers adequate compensation and benefits: Good.
USA gve Ukraine 120 billion.
the usa used the money to refurbish the their own military NOT to send it into ukraine where they couldnt do anything with it
Makes you wonder how many man years of work, that would have bought.
@@andyharpist2938You are off topic.
@@jfverboom7973 It's putting Boeing losses in some context. Anyway, welcome to the Internet Mr Boom.
Boeing isn't alone in how it's devalued work; it's a symptom of a change in the political consensus which took hold under Reagan and Thatcher. Where previously, increases in productivity had been shared between staff and employers, increasingly wages stagnated and benefits were removed. CEO pay skyrocketed despite such people bearing none of the risks of entrepreneurship. Now, 40 years later, workers are paid far less in real terms than they were at the start of the Reagan era. What should have been a continual improvement in work patterns, pay and benefits has instead become a race to the bottom. Sadly, the English-speaking press is largely owned by billionaires who want workers to remain docile, so they push the line of low taxes and lax regulation which allows stock buy-backs and removal of benefits. And, of course, they demonize the unions. Without unions, we wouldn't have weekends or paid sick leave or any other benefits we should regard as basic rights.
You are right to highlight the paradigm shift in the way US companies are managed. The 'laissez-faire' philosophy, along with the attendant deregulation of industries in the 1980's, have given company management the upper hand and they are now solely responding to shareholders' interests; workers became disposable resources. There is no longer loyalty between employees and employers, no shared sacrifices and no shared rewards. The results of this shift seen so far are dismal and bode ill for the future, not just for the workers but also for the companies which being so fixated on short-term results neglect planning & executing for future opportunities. This serious problem, it is noted, does NOT affect only Boeing, but many formerly powerful American manufacturing entities. I feel for Mr. (Kelly) Ortberg, as I think he does see the problems, and wants to implement necessary changes, for the Boeing job is very much a poisoned chalice.
Instead of letting the workers strike - costing BILLIONS - why not spend that money on the employees BEFORE they go on strike ? That would have saved Boeing a lot of problems.
You commie
@@Titere05😂
They needed them to go on strike.
My guess here is that the previous C-suite management didn't much care since they knew they were halfway out the door, and the new team had not had the opportunity to even engage with anyone yet. The strike was likely planned around this change in management. Depending on how you look at it, it could be a horrendously negative start to a relationship, or a clean slate that will lead to improvements. At this point, we'll just have to wait and see.
I heard somewhere they can just claim most of that money as operational losses on their taxes and essentially get it back. Not entirely sure but I wouldn’t be surprised.
It was not just Boeing that was demanding worker loyalty without returning that loyalty. Almost the entire industry turned on it's workers which is why I left the Aviation industry 30 years ago.
Honestly, the same things have been done to all employees in most industries in the UK over the last 30-40 years, wages have just not gone up with inflation and the cost of living, this is why most single people can't afford to live independently and have to share or stay home with family or claim welfare on top of their full time salaries. Even 2 adults in full time employment struggle to make ends meet, which is just ludicrous. Employers have simply reaped in every growing profit margins and cost cutting and virtually never pass any of that success on to the people who actually ensure their product/business makes money in the first place.
Which is why it is so frustrating that those parent's who had much better wages to bills ratios who have paid off their mortgages years ago on a single income to a household constantly have a go at younger generations saying they're just lazy and should stop complaining. Housing was a mere 20% of their wages, now it's well over 60%.
Sorry for the side rant, I just wanted to point out that's it's not just airline companies doing this, it's all the big companies and industries.
Thanks for the reassuring we ain't circling the drain alone 🤪
Interesting
The two max 8 crashes were the real tragedy for Boeing. The FAA gave them too much freedom and not enough oversight for safety.
Sadly, you have described the entire current American economy. 😢
Correct
Prior to the 1970's, American corporations were more-or-less aligned with Henry Ford's statement that the purpose of a corporation was to
1) Provide good jobs by
2) Making a quality priduct at
3) An affordable price.
I think that describes the Boeing of old, and they apparently stayed with that up until the MD merger.
Circa 1970, Milton Friedman stated that the purpose of a corporation was to "maximize shareholder value." This was adopted immediately by the electronics industry and gradually by the rest of corporate America over the next few decades. As a result, experienced employees were no longer an asset, but a liability.
Thus, employees continue to fall further behind inflation while executives, whose compensation is tied to short-term "shareholder value," continue to increase their wealth even as their short-term focus has led to the long-term gutting of the American middle class.
Inflation-adjusted median household income has increased markedly since the 1970s.
Question: if you sell your house, do you sell it for an affordable price or for the maximum price that a buyer is willing to pay?
@@cirilloucazzu4457
Neither, because you have to sell it to a real estate agency for anyone to be capable of buying it.
@@xana3961 Response makes zero sense. BTW, the object speeding by overhead unnoticed is…the point.
@@xana3961 Huh?
As someone who grew up in this time frame life was much more affordable then than now and almost every one had defined pension plans and while people make more the cost of almost everything has skyrocketed take dental care it really hasn’t improved but dental companies (there are few private dental offices now)go to conferences to show methods of picking there patients pockets same with elder care. Health care might have improved but not anywhere near the astronomical cost increase and in the end you still end up dead.
Jack Welch is largely to blame for the corporate "robber baron" CEO culture of modern USA. He did "great violence to the workforce" of GE. Telling that you pinpointed an ex-GE executive as when things went horribly wrong.
Agreed
He did it all by himself did he?
Jack was a symptom of Neo Liberalism where only the shareholder is considered to be of importance.
@@davidvanderklauw I'm sure he had plenty of butt-kissers to help him put his greedy concepts in motion.
As I approach the end of my working life I would like to remind younger folk that you are never rewarded for loyalty.
(something I realised way, WAY too late....)
Same here. I encourage everyone who has a capable brain to become self employed and reap the benefits of your hard work to build your own nest egg and fortune.
I began that 25 years ago and wish I'd have done it 50 years back. If you must be a debt slave working for the almighty weekly paycheck...good luck.
I second that. Loyalty and pride doesn’t pay the bills.
We know.
I am retired.
1. Different industry.
2. First, a comment about somethings you already know. 90% of Americans die without a written estate plan. 1/2 of your lifetime medical expenses are incurred in your final illness and people do not plan for that or their retirement.
3. Bosses of companies are human. They fail to do the long term planning for a company. They don't plan for succession, promotion of employees, sale of the business or saving a reserve for a rainy day.
4. If you were born 3000 years ago and your dad was a brick maker, you became a brick maker. If your dad herded goats, you herded goats. Not true if you work at Boeing, Bank of America or a modern car company. You will have accelerated changes in business models/technology. So, if you want more control of your life, either run your own business or become an outstanding salesman because people in that occupation have the highest incomes.
I would like to tweak your assessment. “You won’t necessarily be rewarded for loyalty.” If you’re in a well run company, the virtuous loop of mutual loyalty is magical. I’ve had that situation once for about 8 years. Amazing times. But when you notice that loyalty has become one sided, adjust your expectations. Like when GE buys the company you work for. Then you’re on your own.
Let us never forget, John Barnett, 62, found dead by apparent suicide in March 2024. Barnett was a long-time employee who raised concerns about Boeing's safety and production standards. Joshua Dean, auditor, died May 2024.
He was found dead after telling people if I'm found dead it was NOT suicide.
I'm a Boeing retiree whose career spanned the '80s, '90s, and on into the teens. I lived the culture shift. However, when I came to the company from outside, I found Boeings production control systems to be abysmally arcane. The culture shifts came concurrently with systems updates, which were universally resisted by the middle management. They cost the company billions in the mid nineties. I think their incentives were skewed toward production schedule and quantity, at the expense of modernization. Try looking into that.
A tip for any industry, not just aviation or manufacturing in general: If your employer or one you're interviewing with tells you "we're like a family here", RUN. A well-respected capitalist in popular media once explained that one of his guiding principles was "Treat your employees like family - exploit them." They will guilt you into accepting things like lower pay, worse health benefits.. and losing your pension.
NEVER TELL YOUR BOSS YOU LIKE YOUR JOB. NEVER BE LOYAL TO A COMPANY. As far as they are concerned, you should make them think you hate your job and will leave if things don't go right. Even that anti-labor lunatic Henry Ford knew that he had to pay his workers enough to buy the cars they're building.
How do you figure Henry Ford was anti-labor? He seems to be one of the only ones at the time that understood the value of labor, unlike Dodge bros. and their stockholders.
It seems your family life was quite a bit different from mine.
We are like family here, and because family should be together, our employees work 24/7.
@@RobotDCLXVI more accurate to call him an authoritarian contorl freak really, yeah.
Rate of pay is why you go to a place of work ( necessity ). Job satisfaction is why you return day after day ( being valued ) .
You said it's a necessity, what will you do if they don't value you?
Employees always get the short end of the stick. The bonuses for the CEO’s would have helped employees to keep them loyal.
Yet they still believe in "trickle down" and vote for the Billionaires' puppet.
This reminds me of a saying I heard from a man who taught a project management course that I took back in the late 80s or early 90s. He was talking about people who complain about how bad their employer is, but who lack the courage to go get a better job if their current job is so bad. I probably am not remembering his saying exactly, but it was something like this: “Your employer employs you because they think you are worth more to them than you cost in salary and benefits. You stay with your employer because you know they are wrong.”
Think about it.
Sounds like a pretty narrow-minded and facile way to dismiss anyone who complains about their job. There are plenty of reasons why an employee might choose to stay at a particular job which have nothing to do with their own esteemed value.
@ Sounds like someone who doesn’t like their job, but lacks the courage to go get a better one.
@@LTVoyager, your philosophy is on par with "have you considered you could just stop being poor?" The badly hidden assumption is that there are always better jobs available.
@ Absolutely. I grew up just above what most call “dirt poor.” I was the first in my family to go to college. I worked all summer, working during college breaks and worked 20 hours a week during each semester to help pay for it in addition to maxing out loans. It absolutely is a decision most people make to be poor and dependent or to be financially secure and independent. I say “most” as obviously there are people with mental or physical handicaps that don’t have that choice, but for 95% or more of Americans, it is absolutely a choice to be poor or to stay in a bad job.
@@LTVoyager lol typical boomer-brain getting so high off your own supply that you can't see the current world around you, which is vastly different than the one you were privileged to be born into.
They should have started the layoffs with the executives like they claimed they were going to do instead of getting rid of engineers
Treating their employees decently, instead of trying to stiff them as a way of raising executive bonuses, would have had Boeing making a lot more money, instead of bleeding cash for decades. I work in this space, and the idea of moving to Boeing is a running joke. "Well you could always work at Boeing!"
Funny. I got an offer to work for Boeing subsidiary (software division). It was by far lowest offer I got in quite some time. So your words is exactly what I'm thinking when having worse day at work: "I could always work for Boeing".
@@adaslesniak I could detail exactly how I know Boeing is in deep shit internally, but that would be an essay. They don't have the internal expertise to control subcontractors, much less to do it themselves.
Employee loyalty died when Companies started rewarding it with lower wages, and cutting benefits and pensions/401k, cutting back on sick pay and PTO and other similar things. All decisions made by people at the top making hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars per year and setting up extremely generous retirement or severance packages for themselves.
God knows the place I work now might not be one of these multibillion giants ( I think we're around the $2 billion mark ) but they keep talking about how good the company is doing during our townhall meetings they insist we sit through ( which is usually 10 minutes of information stretched out to fill a 2 hours meeting ) even though they also aren't giving us a bonus this year, nor a cost of living increase, and annual raises are projected to be almost non existant too. But hey, the board and shareholders are doing great, so yay!
Don't worry. When it's good times it's CEO that made it, when there will be hard days it will be workers fault do they will finally adjust your compensation to new marker reality.
I think Mentour should wear his "captain uniform" costume from time to time! He always looks so happy prancing around with it. Cuteness overload!
Apparently he isn’t actually a pilot anymore because he ended up making more money from his UA-cam channel so now it would be slightly hypocritical for him to wear it.
But that was a recent change. In the beginning he did actually wear it (minus a few features such as his work ID and lanyard but that’s understandable.)
It was actually his uniform that enabled me to identify what airline he flew for-it’s all in the little details. The colour, stitching, and distance between the stripes on the shoulder epaulettes, the colour scheme of the tie and sometimes the shade of the trousers and jacket-some airlines make them navy blue instead of black. The airlines like to stamp their colours on as many things as possible.
😆 It’s a weird side effect of working around pilots from different airlines every shift. They all look the same at first but after a few weeks I started noticing the differences. (Not that I disagree with you. My BF looks absolutely adorable in his uniform, but I digress…)
Anyway while admittedly I’m speculating here, but I’m pretty sure that he stopped wearing his uniform for UA-cam videos so that he could wear a copy of the shirts that he sells as merchandise. A bit of old fashioned product placement advertising. But I don’t think my speculation is incorrect.
@@mikoto7693 Thanks for your answer. Have a nice day!
One of our local companies merged with another one that was failing. Within a year, Execs from the failed company took over the successful one and in just a couple years managed to bankrupt both. Sounds pretty familiar. with Boeing/McD merger
I worked for Air Rhodesia, then SAA through the eighties and was at work 7 days a week. It wasn't a problem! I worked 11 hours a day except weekends, when I worked 8. The problem is that these people want more for less. Life's tough! Get used to it and all your problems go away.Hard work never hurt anyone.Stop bitchin about what you don't have and focus on what you can do with what you have. I'm 63 and still put in a 72 hour week
The story of Boeing is basically the story of postwar America. We survived all these hardships together for decades only to be stabbed in the back by the "management" of our country in the 80s and 90s, and now that there's so little loyalty, conflict is inevitable.
There is more to those words than it seems on the first glance.
@@adaslesniak WDYM?
My girlfriend's mom worked as a Boeing tool store manager. She would talk about stoned, braindead machinists come to her and essentially have no idea how to use their own tools for their work. She was let go last week after 35 years. Living in Washington between Renton and Everett, it used to be a pride to work there, now it's more of a shameful admission. But this area has other reasons to be depressed. There's very little community here, so you either need family or go to bars for anyone to talk to you. It wouldn't surprise me if there's further decay, the foundations that this area has always lacked are now fully making their impact known.
Did she work at the Boeing factory by Paine Field?
@@JFJD maybe direct hire manager. not union member. if she had been, she would have super seniority and be safe from almost ever lay off scenario.
Wtf. Sorry.
What a shitshow. I assume the braindead "machinists" are still employed. What a brilliant strategy by Boeing.
What about the North Charleston 787 work force? Will they see any changes resulting from the strike? Will they get any benefits from it?
Excellent question
That's a good question. With hourly rates going up on one side of the country, it would make sense for workers elsewhere to expect some sort of wage increase, unions or no unions... we'll see!
The workers in SC will benefit from the strike. Boeing knows if they maintain the status quo there in regards to pay and benefits that will increase the chances of the IAM moving into BSC.
They better, After the UAW settled their contracts with Ford, GM and Stellantis (Chrysler), the two NON-union major auto makers (Toyota and Tesla) immediately raised wages.
SC workers are poorly trained and Boeing keeps it that way.
Scabs do not deserve any benefit from the fight by union workers.
I really liked the take on your whole boeing issue in this video. It was fair. I've seen way too many youtube videos and medias trying to shame the workers for striking. Saying they're greedy. And they're the ones destroying the company. When they have no idea what Boeing management been doing for decades and their pay is really low. Especially at a high cost living area like seattle. As an aviation technician myself in a major airline, I was amazed at their pay level. If you're in the big 3 major airline, you're starting off near $40. Topping out at high $60's. AA just ratified their contract and in 4 years they'll be topped off at low 70's. UAL techs are negotiating their contract right now and big chance they'll follow suit. Delta always just rides on union's back and follows pay +1$ to keep the union out so they'll follow soon as well. :D
What they were asking for is not out of the ordinary. Like you mentioned inflation hit this generation hard. Everyone at the execs level in boeing got a raise but wanted to keep paying the actual workers who build planes the same for years or less. Taking away pension away by blackmailing workers saying its that or you lose your job all together by sending the production to other state. Of course workers got pissed off and led to this strike...
That's the American way to run a company. On display all around the world.
Don't forget the tier 1 suppliers and machinists
Yep, we talked mainly about the machinists here but we will cover the tier-1 suppliers soon.
The machinists have their own contract renewal in a couple of years
@@MentourNow Don't you mean SPEEA engineers?
@@cougeuph8439 I can't wait for Lawyers to start having Unions
I have a feeling taxpayers will end up bailing out this husk of former glory in a few years. And that pisses me off.
5 months!
You get it, Petter!
The Puget Sound has become extremely expensive. One now former Boeing worker I know very well had worked for the company for many years. Some of the plants in the Seattle area are separated by about 60 miles. This guy’s commute was from a home near Boeing’s Frederickson facility to Everett, taking him through the heart of Seattle. I think he had to show up in Everett at around 0630, so he avoided traffic, pretty much. But he had an affordable house near Frederickson.
Everything is expensive everywhere around Boeing’s facilities: Microsoft employees have driven up the costs.
And, yes, there used to be multi-generational Boeing families. My wife’s mother and grandmother were among them. Most Boeing employees I’ve known now, including a brother-in-law, hate working there. He’s now retired and couldn’t leave soon enough.
The excesses and greed, and horrific screw-ups of Boeing management have ruined the attitudes and esprit de corps of its workforce.
A lot of these CEOs, seeing what they say in candid moments, really sound like they just want to bring back the days where they can "pay" workers in company scrip.
The damage one forced strike can do isn't immediately obvious. I've seen dedicated workers, glad to put in extra effort when needed, converted to "they pretend to pay me, I pretend to work". Everyone loses over the long run.
Shoutout to Dom for his editing and acting skills!
I'd like to thank the Academy....🤣
Being a former Boeing employee we had a motto, "If it's BOEING I'm NOT Going". The place is a giant toilet and heaven help you if you get injured on the job or mis speak to the wrong person, It's like working in an old decrepid prison where Boeing want's you to come to work, leave your brain at the door and pick it up when you go home. I worked in Metal Fab Hammer Shop where the newest piece of equipment was dated 1966! Boeing manufacturing in Seattle is broken down into hundreds of individual shops making parts where the motto is just get it out the door and if there is a problem let someone else worry about it because each shop has a quota to meet. In the end it was clear the Boeing Aerospace and Machinst Union was in bed with the company, they were one in the same, pushing employees to strike usually comes when deliveries are backed up and can't meet delivery dates for which there are heavy late delivery penalties EXCEPT if the workers go on strike which is the current situation.
I agree labor relations in the US need improvement. However, acting like this is unique to Boeing is disingenuous. All of these CEOs have the same background, the same education, and the same toolkit from which to return profit to investors. It's the new reality and there are a lot of places to point fingers at to include the unions. It's a very complex issue that cannot be boiled down to a 15 min video nor into one or two line UA-cam comments. Interesting take on strategic strikes to push delivery delays, never would have thought of it! (I respect your comment for the effort that went into it!)
@@msromike123so depressing
Hey look, new postmodern horror just dropped.
Saying the word "Crazy Lady" was enough to get me ejected.
The meantime people could be stoned and driving trucks into planes and not get fired.
@@Marinealver It seems like Boeing encompasses the worst traits of the modern political right and left, all under one roof. Yikes.
I hope more Americans would understand that they have more power if belonging to a union.
One word: Detroit.
Management always think of workers, not as an asset, but an overhead.They cannot get it into their heads that workers are tools just as much as a screwdriver or a socket.Look after your kit and it will look after you. There is no loyalty any more in firms.Often you get managers that know nothing about what they are managing.The saying that a good manager can manage anything, is complete balls.The sad part about it is, they make a balls of it, then resign,get paid off with god knows how much and get into another high paying job and bugger up that one as well.
These days the Personnel Affairs department is called HR (Human Resources). Thus objectifying humans into the equivalent of house bricks instead of living and breathing human beings.
@ I read somewhere that Human Resources was not to protect the workers rights but to protect the employers from the workers.
My biggest fear out of this is that Boeing goes bankrupt (which let's be honest is very probable) and Airbus becomes a Monopoly and follow the same path as Boeing now that they have no competition. That would be disastrous
Loyalty and trust work both ways. Modern employers don't believe this, which is why neither get nor deserve either.
That is certainly true. But can there be loyalty with a (starting) wage of a fast food employee?
I would assume, if you do not pay at least 50% more than that (as a high tech company with a very high entry barrier) ... you can not really expect or deserve quality employees.
@@TylerDurden-pk5km Loyalty can come in more forms than compensation (although thats certainly the main one). It can be as simple as not micro-managing your employees, keeping them employed through dips (assuming you have the money to do this, I realise small businesses often don't), being reasonable around letting them take leave, etc. There are certainly a subset of people who are working in roles where they could be paid more elsewhere, but they stay where they are because they feel more valued as a worker where they are.
@@nabagaca Very true, but I would say that especially if your workers perform hard monotonous work at a production line: Pay that enables at least a basic middle class lifestyle in the region you are operating in is a base condition.
A lesson for greedy CEOs, but I am afraid most of them arent listening due to personality issues. It really only long term owners that needs to take the lead
They learned their lesson, just not the one we would like. they personally came out of it very well, and the people who decide who leads the company also personally came out very well. So their lesson has been that what they have been doing works and has no consequences for them.
As a Boeing employee (but not speaking for the company), I'd say the #1 culture change we need is away from this pursuit of maximizing short-term profit for shareholders and go back to focusing on providing good, quality products. So many of Boeing problems can all be traced back to this mentality.
"b-but good quality products don't immediately make me more money!!"
Who are these shareholders? What is profit? Can we rid ourselves of both?
I have been anti union since high school and probably always will be--but I live in the South and we tend to work well without them. However, after viewing this video and knowing how I trust your judgement and analysis, I have changed my mind about the union workers of Boeing and now feel their pain.
My mutual funds advisor talked me into buying Boeing stock against my better judgment after they'd put themselves back together from the MCAS crashes and scandal, but as soon as i heard about that door blowout I called her up and said, "Sell. I don't care what the experts say, there's going to be a coverup."
I didn't realize yet just how horribly they were treating their workers. I don't want to invest in that kind of company either although it's hard to avoid these days.
If they want to keep their investors, they should be willing to look after their workers too. socially responsible investing is becoming a thing now.
They’re completely finished if their employees can’t actually afford to live on the wages that they pay.
*long post* There is no reason to work at Boeing anymore. making less than 30$ a hour for 6 years until you "max out" is causing people to leave at the 2-4 year mark. Why would employees want to come back? You can take your 401k anywhere. Any other company in a related field will have good medical too. The business model of "anyone can do this job" is extremely reckless. Looking at all the incidents with Boeing( even though non of them involved the actual union workers), a revolving door employment strategy is not ideal. Boeing is Complex manufacturing and keeping a workforce and wanting the workforce to come back is going to be paramount to Boeing's success. The IAM751 understood this and that is why they fought for the pension back. Now that Kelly is laying off the workforce I put into question the recover plan once skilled labor in the IAM is hit. The changes that need to be made need to happen and fast. Importantly not rushing production, but slowing down and solving issues that are consistently popping up. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
IAM 751 has lost more jobs than they/them saved (if you are a stonner buddy)
DECERTIFICATION needs to happen. Start a new one.
Finnish postal service (a state-owned corporation) also has that same business model. I heard that one lady, when her mail had been misdelivered (there were two identical blocks of flats next to each other), told the postman that she is a registered nurse, and if she did her job like that, she'd be in prison.
Underpaying amd overworking your workers equals shoddy work with deadly consequences
Hedge funds etc should not be able to have a say in the way companies operate that they invest in.
They drive them down and bleed them dry and simply move on