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Boeing’s largest plant in ‘panic mode’ amid safety crisis, say workers and union officials | Boeing

Boeing’s largest factory is in “panic mode”, according to workers and union officials, with managers accused of hounding staff to keep quiet over quality concerns.

The US plane maker has been grappling with a safety crisis sparked by a cabin panel blowout during a flight in January, and intense scrutiny of its production line as regulators launched a string of investigations.

Its site at Everett, Washington – hailed as the world’s biggest manufacturing building – is at the heart of Boeing’s operation, responsible for building planes like the 747 and 767, and fixing the 787 Dreamliner.

One mechanic at the complex, who has worked for Boeing for more than three decades, has claimed it is “full of” faulty 787 jets that need fixing.

Many of these jets are flown from Boeing’s site in South Carolina, where the company shifted final assembly of the 787 in 2021 in what was characterized as a cost-cutting measure.

“There is no way in God’s green earth I would want to be a pilot in South Carolina flying those from South Carolina to here,” the mechanic, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, told the Guardian. “Because when they get in here, we’re stripping them apart.”

Managers at Everett “will hound mechanics” to keep quiet about quality-assurance concerns and potential repairs, the mechanic alleged, emphasizing speed and efficiency over safety. He added: “Boeing has to look in the mirror and say: ‘We’re wrong.’”

Boeing did not comment on claims that staff have been pressured not to raise concerns about quality. Work at Everett on 787 jets is taking place as part of an established verification program, it said.

The company met this week with US regulators to discuss how it plans to address quality-control issues. Executives have recently described how workers have been emboldened to speak up since January, with submissions to an internal portal for safety and quality concerns up 500%.

Earlier this year, a panel of experts, which was appointed by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) after two fatal Boeing 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people, described a “disconnect” between Boeing’s leadership and workforce on safety, and made 53 recommendations to help resolve its concerns.

After January’s blowout,

Bidenomics Puts Business, Not Workers, First

Before the war in Gaza — before Joe Biden sank his reputation by enabling Israeli brutality — there was a debate about something called “Bidenomics.” Despite everything that’s upstaged it, it’s still worth a look.

Bidenomics never got much love. Interest peaked in July, according to Google Trends, and is down three-quarters since. It probably would be hard to find someone who could define it. For the Right, it’s practically Bolshevism. The president himself defines it as “building the economy from the middle out and bottom up — not the top down.” It rests, as things so often do, on three pillars: “First, making smart investments in America. Second, educating and empowering American workers to grow the middle class. And third, promoting competition to lower costs and help small businesses.”

How’s all that stand up to reality?

By the conventional indicators, especially measures of the labor market, the economy is strong, though perhaps a little past its peak. Reported evaluations are far less sunny than the official stats, however. Most people tell pollsters the economy stinks.

After extraordinary rates of growth in 2021 and 2022 as the economy recovered from the COVID shock, job growth is now slightly below its long-term average. The unemployment rate in October was 3.9 percent, very low by historical standards, though up 0.4 from April’s trough (which was the lowest rate since 1969). That’s the official rate, aka U-3, which has a fairly restrictive definition of unemployment. By the broader measure, U-6, which captures more people at the margins of the labor force, it was 7.2 percent. That’s up from December’s 2022 low of 6.5 percent, which was the lowest in that measure’s history.

Workers look strong in the labor market — the official count of unfilled job openings, a measure of employer frustration, though off its highs of spring 2022, is still high by historical standards, and similar could be said of the quit rate, a measure of worker confidence. Here too it looks like the worker’s labor market power has peaked but isn’t collapsing.

Add to this big union victories, from riveters to writers, and the US working class looks to be in its best shape in decades — which isn’t saying much given the standards of our history, but still, it’s better than nothing. Strike activity, which was more discursive than actual over the last couple of years, is finally showing