The Boeing Lawsuit: How We Got Here
by Lawrence MeyersThere is a missing element in the analysis of the situation regarding Boeing. Simply put, nobody seems to be asking how we got here.
The answer lies in teachings I picked up at a lecture by His Holiness XIV Dalai Lama. The Middle Way of the Buddhists is directly applicable to labor relations, yet few corporations recognize the merits of this approach. One only need look at Southwest Airlines to see a nearly perfect relationship between management and labor. A quote from the linked article points out:
87 percent of its employees belong to a union. Southwest has never had a strike, and now that the network carriers have whacked away at salaries and benefits, Southwest staffers are generally the highest paid in the industry. But since Southwest has about 30 percent fewer employees per aircraft than its network competitors, it has the lowest non-fuel C.A.S.M. (cost per available seat mile) of any of the major carriers.
Southwest has never had a strike. It isn’t just because its staffers are the highest paid in the industry. That’s too facile an answer. No, the real reason there has never been a strike is because of the corporate culture that Southwest has created. Southwest’s management has always made a point of making employees feel like partners. It’s as simple as the airline referring to its employees not as “employees” but as “people” — in other words, humanizing them. The airline sells its service, and its people, on “freedom”. Internally, Southwest is about “the freedom to work hard and have fun”.
Have a look at its careers webpage. It almost makes me want to fill out an application. A 10% discount on buying company stock? Comprehensive health benefits? Annual chili cook-off? I’m in.
And wouldn’t you know it? Southwest has been the most profitable airline for years.
Now take a look at Boeing. Wouldn’t you know it — the company recognized a problem in the corporate culture as far back as 2006. Wait, make that 2004. Oh, wait, that article refers to problems going back into the 1990’s. Looks like Boeing got the message and finally got someone in there to help out.
With this knowledge, is anyone asking why such bad blood exists between Boeing and its unions? Does anyone wonder why a 2008 strike even happened, considering that both sides stood to lose more from a strike than a deal? The union was foolish to strike. As much as Boeing failed with its corporate culture strategy, the union failed to avert an unnecessary strike.
My friends, I come not to bury Boeing but to caution both management and labor. Labor strife rarely exists in a vacuum. A crappy corporate culture led to bad labor relations, which resulted in strikes, which increased antagonism, which led to Boeing’s move, which led to a dispute, which is now where disputes get resolved: in court (Personally, I believe a company may allocate shareholder capital as it sees fit, not as a union sees fit).
However, rather than get wrapped up in who did what to whom, the morality of a company seeking leverage over unions for future negotiations, and whether or not any given contract is “fair”, it behooves both company and worker to seek out the least destructive path.
Southwest Airlines demonstrates that happy employees not only mean happy customers, but a profitable business. There is a middle way.
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36 Comments
Southwest Airlines, the American way! Nice article with good points.
"There is a middle way."
Read about Nucor Steel.
The only way America survives is with a National Right to Work Law.
It is time.
Agreed EOD, it is time. Let the unions focus on their members and they may survive. I cannot believe membership puts up with the crap, yeah I know most of them have zero idea what is happening with their dues. Just saying.
There is always a middle way, but in general, the Boeing unions don't want that way. They want it their way.
There are plenty of union shops that go for years without any strike or serious labor problems, such as SWA. Boeing has had numerous problems, large and small, with it's unions for decades. Remember, they had the union at this SC shop before it was decertified, and the was something like 70-30 against the union.
As a publicly traded company they have a huge obligation to take steps to protect the stockholders from harm. If management feels that increasing production in another state is to their benefit, they should be able to do it.
Boeing is a great company unfortunately located in a bad state…
Which is, of course, Washington. It may be a pretty place- but it is a backwards, corrupt, dishonest Progressive haven with the biggest idiot who has ever disserved the US Senate, and a corrupt left wing governor both wholly owned by the Unions.
That would be Dunce Patty Murray and her partner in nitwittery, Christine Gregoire.
This, and the communist (openly admitted) leadership at the AFL-CIO have this company in a hammerlock. No business unless it is UNION business; product- and competition- be damned. SO, the move to a Right To Work state will not be tolerated.
If you have to lay off half the workforce, so be it. The unions aren't there to protect the workers. They are there for their own Progressive concerns; money, power, control. The fraud is exposed, the media is silent, and it is now up to the people…
"nitwittery" says it all in a single word.
Ha, Southwest – evil Corporate Capitalists making their employees feel as if they're part of the team. {sarc}
Southwest has never had a strike. One reason may be, and you didn't mention it, is that if there was a strike, the company could replace the strikers in a day or two. And Southwest may be profitable, but those profits trickle down to shareholders at a dividend 0.18% per year. Oh, golly. wow! Boeing's return to shareholders has been 15 -20 times greater than Southwest's. We've seen the face of some of these unions in Wisconsin and in Detroit. You say there's a middle ground somewhere. with Obama, and Trumpka? I'm not seeing it..
this is the company that made the B-17, the B-29 and most of our civilian airfleet…
But they are stuck in Washington, and it is killing them. The air-to-air refueling contract; stolen from the superior Airbus vehicle is a rare gem in a more and more non-competitive corporate policy- dictated TO them by Washington…
How many lawsuits does the DOJ have going currently? TX, WI, SC, AZ, IN – where the hell is this train of lies and hate taking this nation???
Discerning readers will have noted the jarring contrast between this corporate culture and that of the unions, which tend to call their members the "rank and file." Don't know about you, but I'd certainly resent being called "rank" on a routine basis…
I respectfully disagree with the entire premise of this article. If the company takes care of it's employees as it does, the union is no longer necessary. I'm certain that the employees realise that. If a union boss comes in and says to strike on an issue, yet the employees have better pay and benefits than the industry standard, who in their right mind would strike?
The simple solutions are always the best…get rid of the unions. The are an outdated solution.
I had to read that twice! National Right to Work Law sounds so Marxist but I get that you mean the exact opposite. LOL!
Stop referring to Boeing’s new plant in SC as a “move.” Nothing was moved. No jobs were lost. Jobs were created in a right-to-work state instead of union controlled WA. For that crime, Boeing must be punished.
Boom!
So yeah…. Boeing might be a pain to work for. They may have made a mistake and created a poor "corporate culture". So what? You don't like it??? LEAVE! Can't do anything else? LEARN! Can't make the same money somewhere else? STFU!
Do any or all of the above, I don't care. But don't stand there with that stupid tough guy pose.
We're not impressed and you're not that tough.
Or they call them by their Communist moniker–"workers". Like bugs.
Wow! That SWA poster sure is old. Some of the cows masquerading as flight attendants today dwarf some of the airplanes. If the industry continues down its current path it won't matter if Boeing builds jets at all.
SWA is a great example of how distributism is superior to capitalism.
My brother in law was a senior VP at a major US corp and the horrors he went through while he was managing plants–the Unions are SCREWING their members. They had a much better contract before they unionized. Tsk-tsk.
I have observed Boeing in several government programs and although they may be on the correct side with this particular issue I have determined you can trust them as far as you can through a 747. For instance:
1. Boeing had to retire/fire their president over the Darlene Druyan scandal over the 767 tanker lease deal. She was the former head of Air Force procurement and oversaw the deal at the same time she talked employment for herself and one of her kids with a Boeing executive. She went to federal prison.
2. In spite of the fact that the 767 tanker scandal was ALL done by Boeing personnel, Boeing managed to use a Businessweek cover article to plead that it was all the fault of those shady McDonald Douglas people who came in with the recent merger. Boeing was just a simple family owned business that was taken advantage of.
3. Aerospace engineers are a conservative lot by and large. To my knowledge, Boeing is the only American aerospace company whose white collar engineer workforce decided to join a union.
There are other examples and I know that other companies have their scandals but Boeing has been consistent through the years.
Southwest does have a good model. I worked as a machinist long ago for a non union shop that treated folk well and the pay was at par with other union shops. By the way, if you wanted to talk to the owner, you could back then.
Really a fair deal all around, until the Teamsters tried to organize the shop. Well, the union organizers got voted out. and all was well. Never got over the line of B.S. the union reps tried to pass of as truth in order to get in there.
There are still good folk out there that employ people and do not need any unions….
Washington State was home to the "Wobblies" or International Workers of the World during the Roosevelt Depression. Washington State is the home of irrational union thuggery. Add Leftist corruption and graft, and you get an impossible situation for any major manufacturer. Boeing is wise to get out as rapidly as they can.
the AFL-CIO is a communist organization- and the members don't know yet- they better get a clue soon…
Ya, I live in a Boeing state, Washingtion state, the employees are always stiking and Boeing is always laying off…the moneys good when its coming in, for the workers, but they never know when they will get layed off…
Correction to Mr. Meyers. Southwest employees aren't just treated like partners, they are partners. When I still lived in my wonderful Texas (Oh, God how I miss it!) I rode Southwest all the time. One time I heard two female stews (excuse me, I guess they ain't called stews anymore; they're Flight Attendants) talking. One said, "I heard you and Jim are retiring." The other said, "Yes, we came on in the first year. I have more than a million in my retirement account and he has a little more than that."
I thought to myself, Oh, Tex, you fool, you could have gone to work for Southwest! All those boring, onerous, and soporific undergraduate and graduate classes, never to have been suffered.
Whenever I have to fly now–which is rare, thanks to my refusal to be groped and x-rayed and insulted–I still always fly Southwest, which I can get not far away from my country place near Indianapolis.
The Washington voters need to look seriously at their labor laws…
Memo to Mr. Meyers. The middle way is not really about labor-management relations unless you jump from one set of tracks to another. It's about meditation-in-activity, as opposed to pure meditation or pure activity. On the other hand, if you do jump the track, I can kind of go along. The thing is, though, unions are obsolete today. They're not just obsolete, they are corrupt and dangerous to a free society. All one needs to do is to look how unions work with Marxists in the present regime, and how the regime uses the unions. Which are the useful idiots? Both, from my perspective. The Marxists would abandon unions in a New York minute if they could get more dollars elsewhere.
Gentle Readers,
Dear Mr. Meyers,
Thank you, once again, Sir!
Sincerely,
John Lepant Brighton CO
You know, the union will always send a company down the road to ruin if they let them. Boeing is a large prosperous company, if they let the union dictate terms….then so be it…. ruin…their fault….bummer…
By the communist NLRB….they must be done away with….
imagine how the lobster feels as that water starts to get hotter…
The 'enslaving, murdering kind' is the absolute outcome…
the Washington voters need to extract heads from posteriors first…
Agreed. My claws are getting tingly!
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