boeing

Congratulations Boeing, Now Hire U.S. Workers

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Boeing just won a hard fought $35 billion dollar Department of Defense contract.

In a surprise twist in a long-running saga, the Air Force on Thursday awarded a $35 billion contract for aerial fueling tankers to Boeing rather than to a European company that builds Airbus planes.

This was a huge deal in 2008, when the Pentagon choose EADS, for Airbus is not an American company, and most of the work, and thus jobs would be offshore. That's your taxpayer dollars going offshore, not hiring American workers, not circulating back through the U.S. economy.

Pentagon officials said decision was based solely on price. Boeing’s bid was more than 1 percent below that of its rival, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, the officials said. If the bids had been within one percent, the Air Force would have weighed 92 additional requirements for the plane as a tiebreaker, and some of those were widely thought to favor the larger EADS plane.

This contract eventually will be worth $100 billion dollars and a huge number of good paying jobs, 50,000 directly and over 100,000, eventually, will be in the state of Washington.

Boeing Discovers You Get What You Pay For

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The LA Times outlines what happens when a major manufacturer of advanced technology, offshore outsources for cheap labor. Guess what? Their entire design and process turns into a disaster. Such is the tale of Boeing:

Sure, it's immoral to abandon your loyal American workers in search of cheap labor overseas. But the real problem with outsourcing, if you don't think it through, is that it can wreck your business and cost you a bundle.

Case in point: Boeing Co. and its 787 Dreamliner.

The next-generation airliner is billions of dollars over budget and about three years late.; the first paying passengers won't be boarding until this fall, if then. Some of the delay stems from the plane's advances in design, engineering and material, which made it harder to build. A two-month machinists strike in 2008 didn't help.

But much of the blame belongs to the company's quantum leap in farming out the design and manufacture of crucial components to suppliers around the nation and in foreign countries such as Italy, Sweden, China, and South Korea. Boeing's dream was to save money. The reality is that it would have been cheaper to keep a lot of this work in-house.

The 787 has more foreign-made content — 30% — than any other Boeing plane, according to the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, the union representing Boeing engineers. That compares with just over 5% in the company's workhorse 747 airliner.

WTO Rules Against Airbus for Illegal Subsidies, while China subsidizes Paper Industry

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The WTO has ruled against Airbus for illegal government subsidies.

The World Trade Organization ruled Wednesday that European governments gave planemaker Airbus illegal subsidies in its battle with U.S. competitor Boeing Co., in a first key ruling on a long-running dispute between the European Union and Washington.

Problem is the ruling is over 1000 pages and interpretation, as in will anything happen as a result, is confusing. So now the U.S. and the EU are arguing over what the ruling means.

Take, for example, one key argument in the dispute: did the U.S. prove that Airbus funding was harming Boeing? The U.S. says yes, as the panel recognized the ''serious prejudice'' suffered by the Chicago-based company.

But the EU is happy that American claims of ''material injury'' were rejected.

There were differing views on whether that means European subsidies were responsible for lost American jobs or market share.

Another question is what this means if the U.S. wishes to subsidize and protect key industries and innovation for future economic growth.

Notice this ruling comes years too late to stop Airbus from taking away orders and business from Boeing.

Meanwhile EPI has a new report, which shows China subsidized it's paper industry by $33 billion dollars from 2002-2009 to overtake the global market.

If at First You Can't Succeed, Change, Change, change the rules again

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If anyone recalls there was major controversy and outrage over a huge $35 billion dollar contract going to Northrup Grumman instead of Boeing.

Now the contract is up for new bids with the political insider implications being for Boeing this time.

Frankly the entire thing is a joke. Yes Northrup Grumman is using Airbus and other European subsidized manufacturing, but Boeing also offshore outsources jobs, manufacturing.

The committee chairman, Rep. John P. Murtha, (D-Pa.), has threatened to withhold funding for the program.

Boeing Strike Partially Settled, Looks Like Union Lost on Outsourcing

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Boeing Works Deal with Machinists but it appears that Engineers and Techies Might Strike.

on the heels of a tentative agreement to settle a strike with its machinists, immediately faces contract negotiations with its engineer and technical workers union, an effort promising to be just as heated and contentious as the one that prompted the machinists to walk out for seven weeks

And on outsourcing:

For Boeing's part, the manufacturer said it was able to retain flexibility to manage its business, a hint to its increased reliance on outsourcing. It was also able to secure a longer-term contract than in prior years, crucial for a company with a poor record of suffering production halts during labor-contract negotiations.

God Bless the GAO

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I don't know if any of ya all have been tracking this, but Boeing lost a major contract while Airbus, i.e. offshore outsourcing won the airforce tanker.

The GAO just agreed with Boeing and sustained their protest, which is good because it keeps taxpayer dollars in the US more for US jobs.

story here.