Tuesday would’ve been a good day to buy Boeing stock.
Wednesday the company announced they were going to ignore the demands of the Washington Machinists Union and go with a non-union shop in South Carolina to build their future 787 Dreamliner. The stock price went decisively upwards.
And good for them for making the right call.
6000+ jobs will be created with this new assembly plant, along with the 2.5 additional jobs that are proven to be created for every Boeing job. This means approximately 21,000 new taxpaying citizens of South Carolina. The state realized this and knew they had to be very nice to Boeing. Washington state on the other hand, was feeling entitled to the assembly plant and did little to nothing until the last minute to try and win the jobs. Likewise, the WA Machinists union were demanding concessions from Boeing to secure a 10 year contract for the plant.
$26 an hour in WA versus $15 in SC. And those are starting wages. Also, unlike what the local leftosphere bloggers keep furiously pounding into their keyboards, those are also “living wages” for their respective regions. It’s what I call “Krugman’s Disease” – Chronic belief in Kantian Economic Theory stemming from acute mental masturbation while Paul Krugman is talking.
The Washington Democrat Party is no zero for six over the last decade or so with the Boeing Company in job creation. The Machinists Union is zero for umpteen. Both of these losing records are because of their respective entitlement attitudes.
As I’ve stated before, this is a small scale replay of the Michigan/UAW scenario. And it will have the same outcome. Hopefully, Washington residents will swiftly realize that a record as bad as 0-6 means you fire the coach.
The WA legislature did nothing to “incentivise” our state. SC legislators gave Boeing $170 million in tax breaks to help with startup costs. If Boeing had stayed in WA, they wouldn’t have had any startup costs, though they would have had to begin paying more into WA’s very, very bad for business Worker’s Comp system that the legislature refuses to fix. Conversely, SC’s system is quite reasonable.
I’m miles from the nearest Boeing plant and even more miles away from the state capital, and I can still smell “The Smug”. It doesn’t smell like victory.
Smartest thing my employer has done for a while, and every Boeing engineer I know is in agreement on that (despite what Ray Goforth of SPEEA likes to blather on about)
Good for Boeing. I see WA seems to be taking its cues from CA. Bad idea. These clowns never learn. It’s less about creating jobs than it is about control via taxation and sucking up to the unions that they’re in bed with. Glad there are still places in the US that companies like this can flee to.
You used a couple very good descriptive words for our “controllers” …. smug and entitlement. I think alot of these types are finding this attitude doesn’t get them very far any more.
Another thing So. Carolina has going for it is they’ve got the land bought and ready to go – probably broke ground as soon as the announcement was finalized. Whenever anything happens around here, it has to be consulted and analyzed to death for a couple years before anything actually happens.
Good call – but I wouldn’t want to be smug!
Way to go UNION! Now you can sit around the union hall, drink coffee and talk about the “good ole’ days”. I’m sure that UNION pension will pay your mortgage, utilitys and TAXES! And I’m sure your home value will continue to rise as more people flock to the union jobs. Er, jobs? Oh, sorry. Of course, Boeing should have moved to Texas. We don’t have an income tax.
Starting wage up here is $15 not $26, other then that, you are right.
http://www.iam751.org/pages/currentwagecard.htm
Sorry, realized this is not very clear. Starting wage for the average mechanic on the production line is a grade 4 on the pay scale, $15.
Thank you, Jim. I’ll make that correction.