“Tit for tat” in battle for Boeing jobs

A few days ago there was a story in the Seattle Times concerning “shoddy” workmanship coming out of Boeing’s North Charleston, South Carolina plant. It seems that Boeing’s Everett machinists are finding—or so they say—a multitude of deficiencies in the fuselage sections for the 787 Dreamliner that they are receiving for final assembly. Of course, Times reporter Dominic Gates is the kind who gobbles up any rumor and salacious detail to get in good with the people he needs the cooperation of to get a story and stay employed. 

Still, given the fact that Boeing’s new business model of contracting work on the 787 all over the globe is without any real centralized quality control, there is bound to be more than a few snafus. Before, it was fuselage sections coming from Italy that didn’t have rivets properly flush, and batteries from Japan that had a tendency to catch fire. From North Carolina. examples provided by unnamed sources claimed that on one plane “Coaxial and fiber-optic cables used for radio communications and data transmission are missing from the mid-fuselage section, which is much less complete than the corresponding sections on the two prior 787-9 models that came down the line” and on another “six wires in a bundle of about 50 in the mid-fuselage were not connected, even though the paperwork from Charleston showed the work complete. The loose connectors were still hanging with zip-tied plastic bags around them.”

Coming from “unofficial” sources, it is hard to tell if these are relatively minor details that  Boeing expected its more experience workforce to complete, or this is a desperate effort to conceal the fallacy of building a complex airplane without centralized control. Supposedly work out of South Carolina is getting worse, rather than better, perhaps more due to ramping up production without fixing the underlying issues. Interestingly, despite the fact that the workforce in South Carolina is facing “challenges” in keeping to its schedule, Boeing apparently tried to strengthen “morale” by paying those workers higher bonuses than Washington-based workers.

Frank Wooten, assistant editor of The Charleston Post and Courier, responded to the accusations coming out of Everett. After congratulating Seattle for its Super Bowl victory, he suggested that the state was being “picky” and “greedy” for complaining about the work coming out of his state. After all, “considering that the battery fires that plagued some Dreamliners last year came from the Everett factory, the folks making those very large planes in the Pacific Northwest would need very large gall to whine about what our plant has been sending their way.” Wooten has his wires mixed-up, of course; the lithium batteries used in the 787 are “Made in Japan,” which only highlights the initial point.

Wooten also managed to bring politics into the discussion: “Such complaints reek of sour grapes from union sorts still sore about Boeing’s decision to build that Dreamliner plant here, where they don’t have to play along with Big Labor.” Instead, he suggested that Boeing employees in Washington should view their competitors in South Carolina as part of the Boeing “team”: “They also sound like they’re pitching a self-destructive snit that ignores the need for teamwork.” After all, “North Charleston Boeing plant workers who have told me about what they do there seem quite proud of their work.” Or at least the work they have done, anyways.

There is no “I” in “team,” says Wooten, although he notes that it is natural that victims of massive local layoffs shouldn’t be expected to “understand” this concept. Although the specific issues relating to “shoddy” workmanship is not addressed, it was implied that any “shortcomings” by the North Charleston wing should be absorbed by other members of the “team,” and teammates don’t complain about what the other is doing.

One can well imagine what might happen if the new version of the 777 was built in another state that didn’t have a sufficiently experienced workforce, and the current complaints may be a bow-shot to any further entertainment of thoughts to build that plane elsewhere. However, it should be noted that workers in other states have a different view of what is going on, which of course implies that they expect other members of the “team” to just shut-up and be “thankful” that they still have a job in the new world order.