Mulally: Global Boeing must share

The News Tribune ^ | 02/07/02 | John Gillie

[Dead Dog]

Competitiveness demands that the new, more global Boeing Co. share its work and its wealth with workers around the world, the company's highest-ranking Pacific Northwest executive said Tuesday in Tacoma.

Alan Mulally, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group, said Boeing can't act like British colonialists extracting wealth from other countries and exporting it all back home.

Mulally, speaking to The News Tribune editorial board, said that with 70 percent of Boeing's commercial airplanes sold to airlines operating outside the United States, Boeing has an obligation to build parts of its aircraft overseas.

"We just operate everywhere," he said. "We need to include everybody around the world in the asset utilization. They buy our products and pay up. We can't just extract wealth from other countries and pay ourselves.

"And the United States has no divine right to our standard of living," Mulally added, defending Boeing's overseas parts production.

The issue of performing work overseas is a sensitive area with Puget Sound Boeing workers who have made limiting out-sourcing one of their top priorities in ongoing labor negotiations.

The Boeing executive said the company wants to concentrate on what it does best: design, sales, marketing and large-scale integration of complex products.

"Competitiveness is at the top - the very top - of our agenda. Whatever we choose to do, we have to do it and add value better than anybody else in the world.

"Because that's what we believe in. That's capitalism. That's market forces."

Mulally said Boeing's skill at large-scale system integration is unique.

"Very few people in the world can build an airplane and make it safe. So the most important thing that we do is product development, sales, marketing, new airplanes, new services and taking care of our customers."

Mulally said doing what the company does best may well mean farming out more parts production elsewhere.

"We just operate in this very global enterprise. Does that mean over time that we'll make less parts? We keep gravitating where we can add more value.

"Does that mean we can include everybody that we can? Absolutely. Does that mean we will keep nurturing our business with China and Singapore and Japan? Absolutely. Is that good for business? Absolutely. Do we want to include everybody that we can? Absolutely."

The Boeing chief said he's eager to see the Puget Sound area solve some of its infrastructure and competitiveness issues so it will be more attractive to businesses. Mulally headed a statewide competitiveness council that recommended solutions to the Legislature.

The penchant for government to repeatedly study what to do and how to finance those improvements and then fail to act is particularly frustrating, he said.

"The most important question is not about transportation, it's not about permitting, it's not about regulation. It's about whether we, the people of the state of Washington - not Boeing - are going to keep pulling together and have great debates, and at the end of the day move forward together.

"I've never seen a set of people who want a proven solution all mapped out before we can more forward with it."

Mulally said he hopes Boeing's layoffs are nearly done. The company has laid off or issued warning notices to more than 28,000 workers.

Mulally in September said the company would lay off about 30,000 workers because of the aftereffects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But even if aircraft orders return to more normal levels, Mulally predicted, the company's payroll won't return to former levels.

Boeing will add workers very conservatively.

Increasing productivity will ultimately mean fewer jobs, he said.

John Gillie: 253-597-8663 john.gillie@mail.tribnet.com

[Dead Dog]

Capitalism?

"We just operate everywhere," he said. "We need to include everybody around the world in the asset utilization. They buy our products and pay up. We can't just extract wealth from other countries and pay ourselves.

"And the United States has no divine right to our standard of living," Mulally added, defending Boeing's overseas parts production.

These People, CEOs, are not Capitalists.

[Dead Dog]

Pretty Cool, eh?

[Black Agnes]

Interesting read ping!

[johniegrad]

The Boeing chief said he's eager to see the Puget Sound area solve some of its infrastructure and competitiveness issues so it will be more attractive to businesses

They must want some significant changes to the "infrastructure" in order to imply threats to the work force. Does anyone know what it is they want changed?

[sarcasm]

ping

[Still Thinking]

Alan Mulally, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group, said Boeing can't act like British colonialists extracting wealth from other countries and exporting it all back home. Mulally, speaking to The News Tribune editorial board, said that with 70 percent of Boeing's commercial airplanes sold to airlines operating outside the United States, Boeing has an obligation to build parts of its aircraft overseas. "We just operate everywhere," he said. "We need to include everybody around the world in the asset utilization. They buy our products and pay up. We can't just extract wealth from other countries and pay ourselves.

If the foreign airplane buyers didn't think the value of the airplane was at least as great as the price being asked, they wouldn't buy them in the first place. Boeing's doesn't OWE them something in exchange for the sale. That's where the airplane comes in.

So how many demonstrations has this yokel been in protesting the low US content of Korean cars? Isn't it unfair for them merely to sell us the product without feeling obligated to use US parts??

[Dead Dog]

So how many demonstrations has this yokel been in protesting the low US content of Korean cars? Isn't it unfair for them merely to sell us the product without feeling obligated to use US parts??

They are just making excuses for outsourcing, trying to make a moral highground. I doubt this is intellectually honost.

[Calvin Locke]

Sounds like an excuse to ship good-paying American jobs overseas.

Probably the way this inarticulate bozo stated it.

However, in getting an MBA, I learned that Boeing messed up big time by not shifting, say some of the wing
construction to the only European firm that could do it, essentially eliminating a necessary and strategic
component from a startup called Airbus. Politics probably would have doomed purchases from the then Soviet Union.

Likewise, Catepillar tries to shift production around the world to try to balance where they will benefit from
world economic situation at any given instant. Not to mention a strike in one area will not shut down
production.

[Dead Dog]

Local taxes are anti-business, anti-business inventory. Public education creates illterate self-esteem zombies.

Is Chicago any different? I'm not sure how much local tax Boeing actually pays. I would imagine they get major Property Tax kickbacks, I think they are just trying to leverage more..all the power to them. But I don't think that will stop them from moving everything thay can overseas. The real reason is paying Indians engineers $12K a year as opposed to Americans $60K.

Boeing has been in Witchita for years, and in fact would have moved there completely in the 1950's for national security reasons if that commie Sen. Magnuson hadn't stopped it.

[Willie Green]

Sounds like an excuse to ship good-paying American jobs overseas.

Sounds like justification to force divestiture of Boeing's Defense related business.

[11B3]

Everyone here forgets that this is no longer the Lazy B as we have always known it....It's actually McDonnelBoeing. Ask any of the higher level engineers that still work there, and they'll tell you that Boeing didn't buy McDonnel Douglas - it was the other way around. Civilian aircraft don't make up the bulk of the balance sheet anymore - defense does. Losing the JSF due to a butt-ugly design hurt the company there, but in the long run the subcontractor spot to Lockheed isn't all bad - it frees up design/engineering staff for missile defense work (among other things).

As a former subcontractor to the Lazy B (making parts for the 777 engines and some other stuff), the handwriting was on the wall back in 1994-1996 that work was heading overseas. The prices for CNC machine tools in this area have taken a real tumble, and auctions of the remaining shops are moving like clockwork - what were once jobs worth having that paid well are now being done in China and Russia instead of here in Puget Sound. Same can be said for the other local huge employer - Mr Gates doesn't give a damn about this area either - he's too busy investing in China.

[Shermy]

Of course they are "capitalists."

The stripmining of America continues apace. This executive is just more honest - and adopting the rationalizations appealing to lefties.

The comparison to colonialism is ridiculous. It's the reverse process. 70% sold abroad? So what? Does China share its "wealth" with us?

Slowly we'll hear more of this from corporate America - exporting production was wrapped in "patriotism" and "free enterprise" and "capitalism". The corporate and leftie elites, who don't care about Americans, are converging to strip away American "wealth." Mass immigration is just another tactic in this war.

"And the United States has no divine right to our standard of living," Mulally added, defending Boeing's overseas parts production. "

Yet, he has a God-given right to his increasing his standard of living. It's the elites against the rest of us. Watch out America. It's coming.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[genefromjersey]

What he didn't say was "Why should we pay American workers a living wage, when the Red Chinese Army provides us with slave labor ??"

What really bugs me is the fact a boycott of Chinese goods would actually harm the USA ...as the authors of the " Constructive Engagement " policy of the 90's doubtless intended .

[sarcasm]

ping

[dennisw]

Great post...thanks