Posted on 11/21/2013 8:02:17 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Here’s the inevitable follow-up on the election of a Socialist to the Seattle City Council — although perhaps sooner than anyone would have thought. Boeing has tried working for years with its unions in the state of Washington, but still cannot reach agreements on labor contracts for its manufacturing facilities. The aerospace giant has looked for other regions in the US to build its planes, which has angered the unions and the Obama administration. It’s also provided an opportunity for Seattle’s newest councilmember to launch her anti-capitalist agenda, and she’s wasted no time in doing so … even before officially taking office:
Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state
“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night. …
On Monday night, she spoke to supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company pensions.
Now Boeing is threatening to take those jobs to other states. “That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it’s going to devastate the state’s economy,” she said.
So what wouldn’t be “economic terrorism”? Seizing the company’s property, of course:
Sawant is calling for machinists to literally take-possession of the Everett airplane-building factory, if Boeing moves out. She calls that “democratic ownership.”
“The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don’t need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do,” she said.
Well, Seattle voters elected her, so they get what they deserve, but perhaps we should point out a couple of inconvenient realities for Sawant. The machinists don’t own the plants, but that’s only just the beginning. Unless the machinists own the designs, they can’t build the planes unless licensed by those who do. And where will they get the raw materials with which to build the planes? Who pays for the energy necessary to operate the machines?
That’s not to say that the machinists can’t build their own planes, of course. They could open up their own business, design their own planes, and build planes themselves, but they’ll need to find an awful lot of capital with which to do it. That means they’d still have to deal with executive management imposed by the VC sources and labor cost controls, which would certainly include getting rid of any notion of defined-benefit pension systems. Then they’d need to compete on price in order to sell the planes, and find people willing to buy them at all when Boeing is still producing proven models in South Carolina.
That is “democratic ownership.” What Sawant demands is outright theft, and we’ve seen the results of it from China to Russia to Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
Besides, Sawant doesn’t want machinists to build planes anyway:
“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.
War machines? Boeing wants to build another series of commercial airliners. When KIRO informed Sawant of that, she replied that she was was “referring to drones when speaking of war machines.”
Hey, Seattle … you elected her. Have fun. The rest of certainly will … at your expense.
What would be the right production infrastructure for film and TV?
This is what we have to make clear in 2014 & beyond. There is a civil (cold) war going on. The Republicans (for the most part) still want a constitutional republic. The Democrats are far-leftists/socialists/communists. There can be no bargaining, we can’t meet each other half-way. Either we go one way or the other & accept the consequences.
And people MUST be aware of what those consequences will be.
I’ve heard clips from her on the radio the past week or so - as far as I’m concerned, she’s a lunatic (one article I read called her a Trotskyite).
Someone asked her where she was going to get the materials to build the busses, after the Boeing machinery had been re-tooled (I’m sure it’s not going to take any funds or effort at all to re-tool machines that make airplane parts to create those that create bus parts /s), she said that there’s a lot of scrap metal around Seattle. Talk about your “wacko birds”!
Film center for one which will automatically approve shooting on sets at different locations simultaneously. Permits have not got to go thru a backlog of city policy red tape. Plus the manpower and talent required. etc etc
What was the earlier directive, before 10-289, that prohibited businesses from moving to more welcoming states? Not the anti-Dog eat Dog act, right. Something else?
I was stationed in Del Rio for almost half of my Air Force career.
If the union wants a pension then they should offer to cut their wages or at least their wage increases to get it. They want the cake and eat it too.
Boeing will go Galt, but I suspect it will not be in the west in some hidden mountain valley, I suspect it will be in the South where there are still a few people who understand how an economy works.
I hope Seattle turns into Detroit. I once lived across the Sound from Seattle, nearly 50 years ago and thought it was a fine place. It has turned into a city of wacko’s. I feel sorry for the sane people that can not get away from it. If I lived there I would say it is time to get out while you can still sell your property, I would hate to see good people be in the same fix as the people in Detroit.
The scary thing is that our Federal Government could step in and offer incentives to Boeing to give in to the demands of the union. Then Obama would not just be screwing the good people of North Carolina by denying them Boeing but would also be making them pay for keeping the jobs away from them.
I hate Socialists.
a socialist is just a commie without a gun.
It must be illegal to advocate outright theft as this foolish child is doing.
You have an interesting profile page.
Very well said.
This chick sounds like a true believer. A real whacko.
Hey, I wanted to thank Seattle for electing a genuwine Commie! Quite refreshing actually to see a honest-to-god Commie who isn’t afraid to say what they really mean. None of this “progressivism” this and “redistribution” that, but just good ol’ fashioned “kill the evil capitalists and take their stuff”.
Yep, let’s just steal that factory and “convert” it into making VCRs and lectric buses and rainbow generators and Unicorn horseshoes and other useful stuff not used for war, you know, because everyone knows that all factories are completely interchangeable.
Good lord. What a fool and a moron. She’s gonna be providing us with a LOT of entertainment for the next four years!
So thanks again Seattle for lightening things up a bit in the political world! (Oh. Word of advice. Don’t elect a MAJORITY of those like her to city council or you’re gonna be REEEEEEEEALLY sorry!)
This has been done before. Run a search on “Flint Sit-Down Strike” in 1937 when the UAW first began organizing the auto manufacturers.
“A socialist is just another commie with a clean shirt”
So does that mean a Progressive is just a Communist who wears Birkenstocks?
“There are a bunch of empty factories in Detroit, MI; Flint, MI and Rockford, IL that they can have fer free!”
“Free” would cost them even more than staying in WA, considering that those towns are run by the same kind of people.
Boeing should start moving their factories and split up all their work among Southern and Plains states. Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, Kansas, Nebraska, and Utah would all love those jobs. The cost of living is less, and the cost of labor would be less.
“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
I suppose nearly half of the voters would say this is in our Constitution.
RE: Run a search on “Flint Sit-Down Strike” in 1937 when the UAW first began organizing the auto manufacturers.
Next question — What has happened to FLINT since?
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