Unknown to most of you was the year-long struggle to keep the airline manufacturer, BOEING, here in Washington State. As it stands BOEING has a factory in Everett and Renton. Our local economy, the economy where I live and work in, depends on two major players here - Microsoft and BOEING. Combined both corporate giants have laid of tens of thousands of people here in the state. Shops are empty and dollar stores go in where there used to be a furniture or fine clothing store. Washington is the state with the highest minimum wage in the country, it's also has one of the highest sales taxes at 9.5% in most areas.

And while the country shows the US is edging out of recession, one of the biggest moves is happening to keep Washington in. BOEING is moving it's 787 Dreamliner line to South Carolina. That means Washington is losing out on up to and exceeding 13,000 jobs. Not much, but for a city of 100,000, it could employ 10% of the city.

What led up to the move:
- Last year a union strike crippled BOEING for over a month.
- Unions demanded more benefits and pay.
- Even though BOEING's tax rate is far below average, Washington would not stoop to meet the tax cuts that South Carolina passed.
- South Carolina dissolved it's machinist Union. BOEING will have access to an un-unionized labor force in SC.

More: http://heraldnet.com/article/20091029/BIZ/...&news01ad=1

How do you know if their demands are not reasonable?

That quote is too opinionated, whoever said it

They wanted more health insurance, a 3.5% annual wage increase for every employee (this is down from like 10% they got last year). It employs 162,200 people, 76,234 in Washington. Do the math. The average salary is about $60,000, but can get up and over $100,000 for some of the bigger engineers. 3.5% is another $2100 per person. That's adding $160,091,400 per year on average. That's at 3.5% - Imagine if the union got what they wanted!! For a company like BOEING who has bled ink for the past 20 years in Washington, it's a big mistake.

For a company who LOST $400,000,000 due to the strikes last year and saw their stocks fall 38%, it's just not a smart move when there's a willing work force in SC who will work for HALF THE PRICE of a Washington union worker.

well still, i understand you're angry at this, but its unfair to blame the Union. Ultimately, while some unions tend to be outrageous, i want to see a complete list of the demands.

While you may deem the union demands insane and ludicris, You have to take their demands and compare them to the costs of living and other expenses, then you may find that their demands might've been fair, the state should've been pressured to lower their taxes and other things as well.

As everybody knows the price of Gasoline, and various household utilities are through the roof, and then you have health insurance costs, extremely high taxes and such, ultimately whatever the bluecollar workers were making, certainly werent enough to live on after everything was deducted.

It's an extremely sad unfunny joke to assume that $60k a year is a livable salary, especially if you've got a family. even $100k is kind of tough to live on nowadays, especially once Obama and the Dems raise the taxes tenfold.

After's all said and done, a $60k a year worker only takes home about $30k-$20k.

So really, before you go blame the union, Look at the facts, not some extremely biased onesided opinion.

Dracul, I don't know where you live but even in Washington, which has one of the highest cost of living rates in the United States, $60,000 is more than livable with a family. $100,000 is luxurious. Perhaps you just lack comprehension of money.

Dracul, I live in one of the most expensive states in the US, and my dad makes about 40k a year (I make about 18k a year). We live fairly comfortably. No offense to you, but I have a hunch that you come from a very well off family.

Yeah I have to agree with that. I live with a friend in a 3 bedroom house. Half an acre back yard with new pool/spa. About 1600-1800 Sq feet I believe. I make 18,000 take home a year, and even I can afford this house on my own, even before the housing market took a dump. $1750/month currently(house payment). Though I pay about $875. Here in Arizona, if you make 100,000 a year you are considered very wealth, especially in this economy.

This is why we need healthcare reform.

I doubt they expected to get all that, they probably were just trying to negotiate a deal. You never tell the person your lowest offer first.

My opinion on unions is, you can't live with them and you can't live without them.

I love the buzz

But, we're not completely losing the 787, SC is just a second assembly line.
I have opinions on the whole matter, but obviously they're biased since i'm from Everett and I'm not looking at the financial and logical side of it all.

PC is right, and this didn't just affect Washington. In Texas, Alabama, and several other cities, Boeing laid off many engineers, cut several programs such as FCS, and broke off several contracts with NASA. The Unions and their strike has caused many people, some of their own, and some that were not involved in the strike, to be laid off, and that right there shows how stupid unions have become. You can argue all day that unions protect the jobs and lives of their members, but when it boils down to it, it cripples companies and ends up harming us all. My dad works for Boeing, and he took a small pay decrease along with several of his co-workers in order for the Houston division to make as few cuts as possible. Did my dad or his co-workers have absolutely anything to do with the union strike? No! But are they and other people who had nothing to do with it going to suffer? Yes! PC has a right to be angry Dracul, and this serves as a perfect example of how socialist ideas such as unions have done more harm than good for our country and our economy.

Charmedpop, so basicly your saying that instead of having laying people in unions off, we should just tax the shit out of them for free healthcare? Your not solving the problem, but instead giving it an even bigger mess to deal with. Throw us all in the healthcare system, we are all part of the union that gets us all in trouble.Im fairly sure the whole point PC is making is that Boeing did what it had to do as a company, and it's the union's fault they had to do that.

Well unions are legal for a reason, they don't usually happen without reason.

Unions were illegal until idiot factory owners forced immigrants into "wage slave" positions in the 1800's. They became legal, solved a few problems, then began undermining the capitalist system after their workers recieved "fair wages." You can actually point a finger at unions for inflation, since they are constantly demanding increased wages.

I dislike Unions in general, and this only increases my dislike for them. If they hadn't wanted more, they'd still have a job...

Sure, 100, maybe even fifty years ago, unions were a good thing, but now they only screw others over. Just like in this case.

Unions are a very Marxist idea anyways...I wish that our industries wouldn't be bothered with them.

amen, we should do away with unions all together.

Unions are fine, until they get too powerful. Just as a tyrannical 1800s-esque employer is a bad thing, so too is a union forcing a business' profits so low it cannot continue to operate in the way it has, if at all. From the $35 an hour 400-pound construction man who turns a "Stop" and "Proceed" sign back and forth for a few hours, to the unfirable incompetent employee at Burlington City Hall, I've never seen Unions do good.

If you hold someone's back to the fire for long enough, they'll either break free and leave or die. In this case, Boeing is just leaving.

I believe that there IS a valued reason behind Unions. Not all unions are bad. In times of good economic growth, small unions can protect themselves from liability issues and losing a job due to on-the-job injuries. Those are what I would call a responsible use of union power; to protect themselves from financial hardships caused by on-the-job injuries and mishaps.

There is the bad side, as is what happens when people realize they can BULLY a company around. When people realize they can throw a tantrum - even during a Great Recession - and get a wage increase, they will. They absolutely will throw a tantrum and strike. That's what happened here, and BOEING finally called them on it.

Think about it. What would happen if MechScape World staffers decided to 'strike' unless I paid them? What if I *legally* could not ban them and replace them? MechScape World would DIE. That's the harsh reality that stupid people don't get.

Well buddy you live free and continue to because of unions. Check out the industrial age.

Hell, look at walmart, they have people who have been working there for 20 years who haven't got a raise. Whenever a union opens up: bam, store closed.

But yes unions get in the wrong hands like everything, they are still however a necessary facet to society.

If Wal-Mart employees were allowed to Unionize and demand more pay, prices would go up and put some of Wal-Mart out of business.

For the record, I hate Wal-Mart. I only go there if I absolutely have to.

There is no such thing as free healthcare. The way we're doing it now is costing us more than if we just mandated and gave people subsides or god forbid we have the dreaded public option.

As for unions, I'd rather have them than not. You guys see unchecked government as evil, I see unchecked big corporations just as evil. I don't think anyone wants to see return to the days of rockefeller.

But remember, Wal-Mart is only big in the first place because they are doing that, (lowering their prices by coporate loopholes). If unions were successful, there would actually be more wealth in the lower class states because walmart wouldn't be dominating and paying employees less as opposed to having many walmart like stores that pay their employees well. All that wealth is going into a few families wallets.

Isn't Target on of them? Here we have Zellers and the Bay (hudson bay company, something like 400 years old) to compete with them, I'm not sure if we do but I hope we tax them until their prices are equal. I don't like their backwards progession in employee care.

But then Wal-Mart would increase their prices to make up for the loss. The disabled and low-income families would suffer further.

Tell me what Rockefeller did wrong? He had a monopoly, so freaking what? 1) He didn't raise oil prices when he held all the oil power. 2) Rockefeller is the best businessman the world ever saw, he bought out one of the most profitable industries in history, and at the time it was not illegal until the supreme court deemed it so. 3) Rockefeller's employees were part of unions, and they protected the worker's rights, but they did not raise the companies overall expenses beyond reasonable means, hence the economic power Standard Oil held. Criminalizing someone who was not a criminal is not going to hurt your arguement.

He had more power than our government! A monopoly screws everyone over, especially small businesses. We can keep our government in check because of the constitution, we can't do that for giant corporations. Some of his business practices make me cringe whenever I think about it. I'm just glad I live in the time I do and not then.

Wow. I made a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes, I think I let the fact that you think he's good get to me. Good job there. That's very atypical of me.

Your right, he had more power than our government, every individual American citizen has more power than our collective government has. We have rights, and the government cannot take away those rights without cause, but as citizens, we can collectively (or not collectively) take away any government power we want to. To argue that one man has too much power over our government is void due to the very nature of our democratic government. Every citizen armed with the right to vote has more power than our government, and every citizen with the basic rights Americans possess has more power than the government. The government wants to tax me? Go ahead government and do what I don't like, but I can leave whenever I want to, and it can't do anything about it. It's a good arguement to make that Rockefeller had direct influence over the government, and I see your point, but did he have direct influence over the individual in America? No.

Just to clarify things, I see him as just a greedy, power-hungry person as you, but according to the law, that wasn't illegal at the time. That's half the point I'm trying to make about people using Rockefeller as an example of a bad person. When Rockefeller achieved a monoploy, he did so legally and entirely within the means of the constitution. It wasn't decided until later that what he did was wrong, and as a result his company was destoried. I don't believe it was fair to take away a man's hard work because he was successful, especially when it wasn't decided it was illegal until after it done. That's like making drinking illegal tomorrow, and punishing everyone that gets drunk today.

well just fyi, i live in new jersey and thanks to the democrats its one of the most if not the most highly taxes state in the Union, so, i should've clarified my statements regarding income and survivability on certain income numbers. and i was speaking a standpoint regarding people owning houses with a $60k salary in new jersey, which is really an impossible feat nowadays in this state with the high taxes.

I don't know, as a business minded person, i tend to dislike unions because they hurt company profits, on the other hand, as a person who likes to take the middle ground on some things, it is a huge injustice to your poor ancestors to demonize the Unions. As marxist and socialist as Unions may be, they were made to combat the social and economic injustices that employers were doing in the 19th century into the 20th century.

Employers would pay workers far below the minimum wage and make them work excessively long hours, to the point of starvation and death.

And the workers could barely feed their families.

So there has been alot of good that has come from Unions. Though sometimes Unions tend to get infiltrated by undesirable and radical elements which go above and beyond acceptable standards of conduct and negotiations and demands.

There are now laws protecting workers from getting taken advantage of. Unions had their time and place, it has now past, the union bosses get rich of the backs of the common man.

I think this pretty much sums it up.

Wich were put to decrease unions, so they were only put there in the first place because of unions. No unions, no laws.

And there aren't so many laws in the states as it is very visible that people get underpayed.(IMO)



Yeah I suppose it's full package or nothing. (raise prices and low class salaries)

The laws are federal laws man, They will stay regardless of the unions.

I have to say that Union thugs are very closely intertwined with Democrats. In general, the democrats usually do what is expedient for their own constituency. And that is more government, union thugs, radical groups like ACORN that seek to usurp our society, etc. This is not my opinion. This is a fact. How much money in these so-called stimulus packages and even the healthcare bill is going or has gone to democratic interests?


Anyways, I don't agree that we are edging out of a recession. If anything, things are getting worse. And they will get MUCH WORSE as Obama and co. continue this horrendous spending. If the healthcare bill passes, then you've seen nothing yet. Shit hasn't even hit the fan.

The only reason you see an "increase" is because of government jobs. Of course at least something is expected when you waste trillions of dollars. And these jobs are not only government-payed for (meaning taking money from one tax payer and using it to subsidize another which is not economic growth but redistribution of existing wealth, with lots of waste thrown in) but also likely to make things worse as they are probably not economically sound as would be if you simply gave the money back to the tax payer to do with as they see fit. When the government creates jobs, this is not economic expansion. The government is incapable of generating new wealth, only redistributing and losing wealth generated by the private sector. Thus the reason socialism does not, and cannot work. It's smoke and mirrors.

I think Unions have adopted the Marxist ideals they did not used to have. When Unions were established, socialism was not nearly as common as an idea as it is now, there was no communist governments in the world at the turn of the 19th century, Americans genuinely believed that hard work was worth it's weight in gold, and all Unions wanted was some safety on the job site so workers could continue to work hard to make their own wealth, they didn't want wage increases beyond what they deemed their jobs were worth, and they didn't want their companies to go under either, since the company to a worker in the early 20th century was the source of income and life, if the company you worked for was gone, you had no money and were royally screwed. After the American government became increasingly socialistic following the Great Depression, unions began to take whatever they could. Unions demanded free healthcare, extremely high wages, and benefits that the companies simply could not provide. The auto-industry is a perfect example of how unions have killed capitalist industry. In 2007, Chevy lost an average of $500 for every car they SOLD. Unions had driven wages up so high that Chevy could not compete, and foriegn car companies like Toyota and Honda began to take profits that Chevy or Chrysler or Ford would have otherwise made, hammering the last nail in the coffin for the domestic auto-industry. We have all seen what unions have done to our best companies, so why hasn't anyone done anything about it? Because some poor mechanic might lose a few weeks of vacation? Nobody likes to step on anybodies toes, but the union workers can either work for less than what they demand, or they can lose their jobs. It's their choice, and clearly they are idiots and have chosen to lose their jobs.


Exactly, as much as I hate to admit that the federal government might have done something right, they have established a much needed minimum wage based off of the cost of living for the states, established OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Association), and have done the job of the union better than the union.