Once Again, It's About Manufacturing!

Today, Boeing, once a local company here in the Pacific Northwest, announced that is was going to build a second line of "Dreamliner" planes in South Carolina rather than in Washington. Of course, as these things go, South Carolina gave Boeing huge tax incentives and other lures to get them to their state, including very management conducive anti-union laws.

Boeing's Dreamliner has been plagued with problems. It hasn't even had one test flight, which has been delayed now for over a year. Management, in an attempt to appease it's international customers, parsed out various components of the plane to dozens of different countries, and guess what, the parts don't fit!

As this is written, talk show hosts and call in "experts" are blaming Washington state's governor and the Machinist's union for failing to give up their right to strike, as a reason for Boeing beginning to decamp from Washington. It's extremely simplistic to do that.

In an age where union strength is all but gone, we have forgotten what we, each of us, whether white collar or blue collar, owe to unions. 5 day work week, holidays off, paid medical insurance, disability insurance, unemployment benefits, minimum wages, 8 hour work day, over time pay...giving up the right to strike essentially makes a union useless.

Rather, this is about global markets, stock incentives for management, squeezing every dime out of labor, and fickle governments bending over backwards for manufacturing jobs that normally, these days, are sent overseas.

It really is time that this country wake up and realize if we continue to lose these jobs we will dig ourselves deeper into this economic hole. Plus, keeping manufacturing jobs is sustainable. Isn't it better to buy and sell goods closer to home than waste so much carbon having them shipped all over the globe?

There has been a recent discussion in my neighborhood about a bike path that would cut through a vibrant industrial area. The local businesses are concerned about the safety, of bikes zipping through their driveways. And some of the complaints from bike advocates is that the businesses use some of the land for employee parking, so they resent the cars on what they think should be "their bike path." What gets lost in this polarized discussion is the need to keep these light industrial jobs within the city, that those employees probably have to drive to their jobs since they may not make enough to live in the chi-chi condos that are edging closer and closer to the industrial area. And that real estate development with the attendant ritzy boutiques is simply not sustainable (I walked into one boutique today advertising itself as selling basic "goods," where an Oxford cloth shirt was retailing for $180! Yikes!).

If we want to revive this economy we need to pay attention to manufacturing.