The Daily Escape:
Lenticular cloud at sunrise, Salton City, CA – May 2024 photo by Paulette Donnellon
At a time when Boeing is facing calls by the flying public as well as from governments to return to its focus on safety, the company has scored an âown goalâ by deciding to pick a fight with its in-house firefighters union, who help to keep Boeing itself safe.
From The Stand, a Seattle-based newsletter about working people:
âThe more than 120 fire fighters who protect Boeing employees and facilities in Washington state â members of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local I-66 â are struggling to get a fair contract from the Arlington, Virginia-based company.â
At the heart of the dispute is Boeingâs insistence on raising the time it takes for firefighters to reach the maximum pay scale from 14 years to 19 years. Negotiations have been ongoing through a federal mediator for more than two months, with no deal reached. Nineteen years is nearly the entire work span of a firefighter’s career. If this deal is accepted, they will hit the top of their pay scale and retire soon after. It’s understandable why that would be good for the company. From Boeing: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âDespite extensive discussions through an impartial federal mediator, we did not reach an agreement with the union….We are disappointed the union chose not to even bring our offer to its members for one final vote….We have now locked out members of the bargaining unit and fully implemented our contingency plan with highly qualified firefighters performing the work of IAFF members.â
More from The Stand:
âBoeingâs âlast, best and final offerâ to the fire fighters was rejected by more than 80% of IAFF I-66 members. The union says the offer failed to address fire fightersâ concerns about short staffing, pay thatâs significantly lower than local fire departments, and step increases that take 19 years to reach the top of the pay scale…â
Obviously, âSafety Firstâ remains Boeingâs motto. Maybe thatâs Safety of our bonuses First. This also reminds Wrongo of the old saw:
âSocialism is the fire department saving your house. Capitalism is the insurance company denying your claim.â
Continuing Boeingâs recent tradition of quality operations (?) and stable management, theyâve now moved on to scab firefighters for their burning needs. The entire Boeing firefighting staff is 125 people. So think about the negotiations on how many years should exist between pay step increases: Boeingâs demand makes no effort to meet somewhere in the middle. Wrongo isnât sure what is driving the Boeing Board of Directors: The union only has 125 members, so the amount of money Boeing would pay if they employed a âmeet in the middleâ settlement seems tiny compared to the scale of Boeing’s total expenses.
Itâs also awful for Boeingâs Board that this was reported in the media on the same day that the FAA announced another investigation into Boeing over falsified recordkeeping in its 787 program: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âIn an email to Boeingâs South Carolina employees on April 29, Scott Stocker, who leads the 787 program, said a worker observed an âirregularityâ in a required test of the wing-to-body join and reported it to his manager…..After receiving the report, we quickly reviewed the matter and learned that several people had been violating Company policies by not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed…â
Son of a door plug! The world is watching in real time how difficult it can be to turn a huge companyâs culture around, particularly when the members of the firmâs C-Suite whose major function in the corporation is its financial performance doesnât see the maintenance of that culture as a huge problem. It may take many years for Boeing to pull out of this nosedive, or they may fail entirely.
In the meantime, do you feel their planes are safe enough to fly?
Boeing torched itself when it moved away from Seattle and took on the financial managers’ culture that looks to squeeze out dollars at the expense of quality. This reflects the airlines as a whole. So when we think of pilots like Chesley Sullenberger, who had the best training (even glider experience in the military) and expertise in training pilots… well we can expect to see fewer of them. Men with Sully’s skills would move on the corporate management and leave flying behind.
I just had a bunch of plumbing work in my house. The plumber, a 62 year old expert (not cheap) ended up fixing 2 mistakes made when we had renovation work done 16 years ago. Expertise is won by hard work and training. But new so called plumbers are barely out of apprenticeship when they start a business and so on. They may have passed a test but don’t really know what can go wrong.
Anyway now all is judged by the dollars and quality be damned.