Boeing's largest plant in 'panic mode' amid safety crisis, say workers and union

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/01/boeing-safety-crisis-response-union-busting

by swores • 2 years ago

75 88 2 years ago

Boeing’s largest factory is in “panic mode”, according to workers and union officials, with managers accused of hounding staff to keep quiet over quality concerns.

They're fixing the glitch!

Rinzler893• 2 years ago

Was that an Office Space reference?

skywal_l• 2 years ago

He means that the problem should work itself out.

lenkite2• 2 years ago

Good things all these worker and union officials are choosing to retain their anonymity. They would perish suddenly from suicide or emergency health issues otherwise.

lifeinthevoid• 2 years ago

I’m surprised the stock isn’t doing worse than it is doing currently TBH.

Rinzler893• 2 years ago

They're a major defense contractor, that's why.

nickff4• 2 years ago

Many of their defense projects haven’t been going well (notably space launch, refueling tanker, and jet trainer).

passwordoops2• 2 years ago

It's still a blue chip with either monopoly or cartel control over their relevant markets.

Until the government acts in a direction that would break up that scenario, you can expect the stock to continue its good performance

greentxt2• 2 years ago

Good performance is a stretch. It's down 15% on the 1yr and 50% in the 5yr. Arguably it's a safe buy right now, but that's because, given what you say, it is unlikely to fall further. At least under the current administration.

Havoc• 2 years ago

US won't let its main player in the airliner space go down no matter how many people they kill with their negligence.

The stock market knows this.

chinathrow• 2 years ago

While this is certainly true right now, the clients will eventually revolt and go elsewhere.

stevenhuang• 2 years ago

The company can continue to operate and wipe out all common shareholders at the same time.

quickthrowman3• 2 years ago

Airbus is their only competitor in the civilian market. The US Government has actively destroyed companies that attempt to compete with Boeing [0].

They’re also one of the top 5 prime contractors in the defense industry.

There is no possible way the US lets its sole domestic airplane manufacturer go bust. I would speculate that the government wouldn’t even want to chance a Boeing bankruptcy.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_...

I’m just a dumb guy who works in construction, if I know the above, then the market definitely knows it.

nickff4• 2 years ago

Boeing is not the only US airplane manufacturer, it is the only commercial airplane (airliner) manufacturer.

Matheus282• 2 years ago

Airbus is their only competitor in the civilian market.

I feel that I’ve started seeing Embraer planes a lot more often over the years. If you’ve flown some regional routes, you most likely flew in one of them at some point

xyst• 2 years ago

It will be a slow death.

raverbashing• 2 years ago

“There is no way in God’s green earth I would want to be a pilot in South Carolina flying those from South Carolina to here,” the mechanic, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, told the Guardian. “Because when they get in here, we’re stripping them apart.”

And of course, it's the Washington plant that's worried.

Company culture is more important than the MBAs would have you believe

toomuchtodo2• 2 years ago

Company culture externalities take too long to catch up to quarterly numbers. Have to tighten the consequence loop.

hiddencost• 2 years ago

This is called a "union" where I come from.

passwordoops2• 2 years ago

Not to mention expertise and experience

tamimio4• 2 years ago

‘If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going,’ was the decision and last line my friend said when he was planning his travel the other day, and I was playing devil’s advocate with him. But deep down, I would not recommend to anyone I know to fly on Boeing anymore, including myself. So now, in addition to the cost, bags, and stops, I will be checking if the plane is Boeing and trying to find an alternative.

greentxt2• 2 years ago

Is that possible? Don't the airlines swap planes at the last minute?

llamaimperative2• 2 years ago

Obviously it's not possible to guarantee but it's definitely possible to reduce your chances of being on a Boeing aircraft.

largbae• 2 years ago

It is not perfect, but most airlines will try not to swap plane models as it breaks all the seating assignments.

I think the older Boeing planes through 737-900 are as safe as ever. 737-MAX+ and 787 seem to be where the design process went awry. Even then, there seem to be known workarounds to the bugs.

For what it's worth, I still fly on them all, I just remember to tell my family I love them before takeoff when the safety card has MAX on the label.

tamimio4• 2 years ago

If you go to the airline website (or even other booking sites) and click on details you can see the flight, operator, and the aircraft. In fact, some websites (I think kayak) can even filter by including or excluding aircraft specific models. In worst cases, you might need to know the aircraft from the seat map. From my experience they rarely change what’s the aircraft, if they had it written, most likely it is the aircraft that you will fly with.

ta12432• 2 years ago

It's unlikely that BA will put a Boeing on a London-Rome flight as they don't operate short-haul Boeing planes. Yes they could put a long haul on there, yes they could wet-lease another one, but those are very unlikely situations.

If you choose to fly Ryanair on the route instead, you are almost certain to get a Boeing 737.

If you care enough then you have to vote with your wallet, it's the only say you have.

jules-jules• 2 years ago

You can fly an all airbus carrier to avoid this scenario. JetBlue for instance in the US.

xvector6• 2 years ago

Will you also avoid ever getting in a car? Because statistically speaking, you're far more likely to die in a car crash than in a Boeing plane.

Edit: In the last decade, in the US, about 2 people have been killed from aviation, and 365,000 people from car crashes.

starttoaster2• 2 years ago

You also have some control over the car whereas your life is entirely in the hands of some random people you don’t know and some Boeing equipment in the plane.

llamaimperative2• 2 years ago

How costly is it to one's quality of life to avoid being in a car versus having a different departure time and sitting on an Airbus instead?

tamimio4• 2 years ago

Correct, but now examine the survival rate statistics for each category. A person might experience numerous car accidents in their lifetime, yet it only takes one aircraft accident to be fatal.

lynndotpy• 2 years ago

I share this sentiment.

"Survival rates are averages taken in the past" was a reassuring refrain in the context of terminal illness and risky surgery, with the assumption that survival rates improve over time.

But the same words also apply to air travel, without the same assumption.

senordevnyc• 2 years ago

I'm pretty shocked at how many here seem to agree with you. Your chances of dying in a Boeing aircraft went from something like 1 in 10 billion to 1 in 9.999999 billion. Why bother thinking about this at all? Even if risk reduction is your #1 priority in life, there's a near-infinite list of better ways to reduce your risk than trying to pick Airbus aircraft over Boeing.

What am I missing?

nabla9• 2 years ago

What am I missing?

Statistics collected over decades don't apply when circumstances change.

If Boeing safety reached critical tipping point recently, we are can talk only in 1 in tens of millions safety at best. There are less than 20 million commercial Boeing flights per year. 737 MAX flies only fraction of those.

adolph• 2 years ago

That it is just now “in panic mode” is indicative of the root issue.

TheBlight6• 2 years ago

I have no idea what's going on but it feels to me like this somewhat recent popular media anti-Boeing campaign isn't strictly organic.

Angostura• 2 years ago

Feels pretty organic to me. Things falling off planes and whistleblowers alleging coverup generate organic interest

TheBlight6• 2 years ago

Maybe it is to some extent but I'm seeing a more general pattern wrt commercial air travel coverage. There's the turbulence stories and the "near collision" stories. It's possible every aspect of the air travel system is breaking down in real-time I suppose. But it's also possible there is some sort of agenda at work and its promoters are leveraging anything they can find.

m_fayer• 2 years ago

Things falling off planes just as we’re starting to forget the terror rollercoasters to which they subjected hundreds of people before their death. Organic indeed.

roughly2• 2 years ago

They had a door blow off an airplane mid flight - that'll get the press's attention. Whether or not they're a worse goat rodeo than the average modern American multinational is up for debate, but they're certainly enough of one to sustain this kind of press naturally, and especially for a company that builds half the commercial airliners in the US. Plane crashes get clicks.

albiabia• 2 years ago

when whistleblowers start dying in not strictly organic ways the media tends to come down pretty hard on behavior like that

TheBlight6• 2 years ago

Is there evidence any of these deaths were the result of foul play?

burnished3• 2 years ago

I'd guess no. Boeing has a poor reputation in some circles, hell I changed the type of engineering I pursued in school because Boeing was a major employer

RedShift1• 2 years ago

The chickens are coming home to roost. Unfortunately those that sent the chickens on their way have made bank and bailed out already.

rurban• 2 years ago

Still the wrong place. Not the plant should be in panic mode, management in Chicago should be. It's their fault at least. Hope the law suite will be coming

xbar• 2 years ago

Another story which lays the enshitification culture at the feet of McDonnell Douglas.

hilbert42• 2 years ago

I've just reread this article and it's very good in parts. All the essence about what's gone wrong at Boeing is there but you have to read between the lines a little to extract it all (but it's all there).

But here I don't want to dwell on the broader issues of why Boeing's in trouble. Instead I've copied a section from the article that quotes a Boeing mechanic who clearly knows what he's talking about. What he says hits the nail exactly on the head. He hones in what I believe is wrong with the management of many Western companies today and it's not just Boeing, unfortunately.

Simply, there are too many middle and upper managers—usually Harvard/uni types—who don't have a fucking clue—who don't know one end of a screwdriver from another and they're the ones running companies nowadays. These useless bastards only get in the way.

Now I'm not decrying all uni types for the sake of it (as I'm one), but you'll find many of the best engineers and other professionals often have good trade skills or hands-on experience and they know how to get their hands dirty just like everyone else in the skilled workforce.

What Boeing's mechanic says in the last paragraph is just so fucking correct that it ought to be etched in stone and put up on a public monument:

"…Some veteran union employees at Boeing draw a link between its current issues and a move by the company more than two decades ago to introduce “team leader” managers, replacing a previous system whereby the most senior, experienced factory workers were in charge.

“The team leader isn’t picked by his skill on the airplane – he is picked by his relationship with another manager or another person,” said the mechanic. “Now we don’t have team leads who know what’s up.”

Today, the managers “doing the thinking have never done physical labor before”, they added.

“There’s no way you can learn how to build an airplane in a school on the third floor. There are a lot of things you can learn in the classroom, but building an airplane is not one of them.””

Boeing's largest plant in 'panic mode' amid safety crisis, say workers and union

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