Boeing To Lay Off Hundreds of Engineers Amid Sales Slowdown (reuters.com) 120
According to Reuters, Boeing has warned its employees that it "planned another round of involuntary layoffs that would affect hundreds of engineers at its commercial airplanes unit." From the report: The latest job cuts followed a prior involuntary reduction of 245 workers set for May 19 as the company responded to increasing competition and slowing aircraft sales. The additional layoffs are due to start June 23, according to the memo from John Hamilton, vice president of engineering at Boeing Commercial Airplanes. "We are moving forward with a second phase of involuntary layoffs for some select skills in Washington state and other enterprise locations," the memo said. "We anticipate this will impact hundreds of engineering employees. Additional reductions in engineering later this year will be driven by our business environment and the amount of voluntary attrition."
Yeah (Score:3, Insightful)
Some exec is looking at the millions he saved by getting rid of all that pesky R&D/QA and going, "Man, can you believe we spent millions on personnel who just made sure stuff worked right? Good thing that's all going to my fat bonus now."
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"Some exec is looking at the millions he saved by getting rid of all that pesky R&D/QA"
Oh that happened already decades ago; R&D is now handled by university students who PAY for the privilege of having the IP transferred to their school...
Then graduate with debt and zero guarantees of a job.
Electronics Ban (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope we are beginning to see the effect of Trump's electronics ban on Gulf airlines. They are moving orders away from Boeing to Airbus
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Nope we are beginning to see the effect of Trump's electronics ban on Gulf airlines. They are moving orders away from Boeing to Airbus
As much as Trump deserves a good bashing, what we're seeing started long before him. Boeing only sell two aircraft families at the moment, the medium range 737 NG family and the long range 787. Both of which face fierce competition from the Airbus A320 family as well as the A330 and now the A350. The issues that airlines have had with the B787 have hurt it now the A350 is operations.
Also their withdrawal from the super heavy market has completely given that market to Airbus and their A380. Orders for B7
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Hmz.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are the engineers always being fired first? Guess it's being something thougth by some random MBA course or something?
Re:Hmz.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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That is correct. Most of the Dreamliner [businessinsider.com] for example is made outside the US, and increasing amounts of engineering are moved as well.
The days when Boeing made most of the airplane in the US are long gone, and have been for a while.
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The days when Boeing made most of the airplane in the US are long gone, and have been for a while.
That was because they tried to open a new factory in America, and the Obama administration said it was illegal [nytimes.com] for them to build a factory in a right-to-work state (which is most of them).
Re:Hmz.... (Score:4, Informative)
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Whether a plant is new or a relocation is largely a matter determined by the bias of the regulators.
Re:Hmz.... (Score:4, Informative)
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No, the timing of the relocation ...
There was no "relocation". The factory in Everett, Washington did not close, and Boeing had, and still has, no plans to close it. The issue was where a second factory would be built. Boeing offered to build it in Washington, if the union would agree to a long term contract with a no-strike clause. The union refused, and after a long legal fight, Boeing created the new jobs elsewhere. Some went to South Carolina, and some went overseas.
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Idiot the complaint dealt with the contemporaneous actual 100% real threat form Boeing to move the production line. Read the god damn web page.
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So you think it is okay for a company to close a plant in a state where workers have rights and moved to a state where workers can be abused with twice the hours at the same rate of pay?
In 30 years 90% of manufacturing will be done by robots in the USA. this will be good for a few and horrible for many.
with luck we will switch to a just in time custom manufacturing using small businesses to keep people employed. with out that though huge numbers of people will be unemployed and sucking coffers dry.
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So you think it is okay for a company to close a plant in a state where workers have rights and moved to a state where workers can be abused with twice the hours at the same rate of pay?
Yes, I think that companies should be able to locate jobs in any state they choose.
Overtime laws in Washington and South Carolina are similar, so I think you are spouting nonsense about that.
Hourly pay for Boeing's assembly line workers in SC is about 20% lower than in WA, but the cost of living is also considerably lower.
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So you think it is okay for a company to close a plant in a state where workers have rights and moved to a state where workers can be abused with twice the hours at the same rate of pay?
Of course. I don't respect abusive labor unions, particularly in times when labor is under stress.
In 30 years 90% of manufacturing will be done by robots in the USA. this will be good for a few and horrible for many.
Unless, of course, that doesn't happen. We can implement employer-friendly social policies before then and keep that from happening.
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So you think it is okay for a company to close a plant in a state where workers have rights and moved to a state where workers can be abused with twice the hours at the same rate of pay?
I don't think it should be okay, but I do think that it's somewhat inconsistent that it's permitted when the jobs are moved to a different country without worker protection laws at all, yet not allowed when the jobs are moved to a different state that must comply with the same federal legal framework.
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Bullshit. I've worked at union shops before and I would have loved to be able to say no to joining or paying for the union. It should be a choice. Just like when the auto plant in the south said no to the union because they didn't want one either.
Forcing workers to join an organization that they don't want to be part of is anti-worker.
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Quick, name the professional body that regulates engineer's pay???!!!
Oh yeah, unlike accountants, lawyers, notaries, or doctors, engineering isn't actually a profession. It's a masochist's wet dream.
You ever hear about H1Bs for accountants, lawyers, notaries, or doctors?
Hmmm.....
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I was laid off while working for Boeing Defense and it's a comparatively good company. The third time was the charm for me and I saw them lay off both younger and older - the average age in some areas is probably somewhere in the 40's. They gave us two months notice. I was older which meant a hefty severance and early retirement including medical. Plus a 401K. My friends in other aerospace and my brief experience with a smaller firm didn't fare as well. Boeing's a yuge company a
Two months ago "Couldn't keep up with demand" (Score:5, Interesting)
It's for a stock bump (Score:3)
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They took a hit when Trump announced "Cancel Order!" to their Air Force one bid. Our entire economy is built around short term stock bumps because most CEO pay is in bonuses and stock options (so that they don't have to pay income tax on it).
Boy, it sure is a good thing that their projects don't last long, and they never have to think about the impact of short-sighted stupid decisions in the long run. I mean, how long do you really need an engineer to design an airplane? Surely no longer than a fiscal quarters worth of stock bumps, right?
/sarcasm
They can just hire them back (Score:2)
The problem is our entire economy is being run by a well connected good 'ole boys network with very actual smarts. Things would go a lot smoother if we acknowledged our ruling class and took steps to reign them in but as things stand we just pretend they don't exist.
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Re: Two months ago "Couldn't keep up with demand" (Score:5, Informative)
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The other reason, "increased competition," seems all the more reason not to reduce the workforce responsible for developing the products in competition, if you can afford not to. Otherwise you're being very shortsighted, making yourself ever less competitive.
There may be some detail to explain this situati
Re: Two months ago "Couldn't keep up with demand" (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of that is the long lead times for Airlines. Engineers would be needed now to be designing a new plane which would enter manufacturing 5-10 years from now. There may be enough manufacturing demand for the existing planes but not enough demand for a new plane. Actually since its pretty much impossible to forecast demand 10 years in the future most new planes are gambles and Boeing is not feeling flush enough to take the gamble. Things like Trump pissing off the rest of the world which takes away a large chunk of Boeings potential customers play into that. But other factors like China and Russia coming out with good enough alternatives meaning many of the middle income country markets will shift away from Boeing and Airbus in the 5-10 year timeframe.
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they're both wrong. they'll actually just hire new engineers via h1b within 12-18 months.
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I called that story a load of bollocks back then - https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
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I don't see why. As a rule, engineers don't build things, they *design* them. Once the design is fully complete and you have a production model fully built and tested, I suspect you need far fewer engineers to build the next hundred. If you have lots of orders for existing models, but few orders for new or heavily customized designs, then you need lots of assembly technicians and may well be hitting the limits of your production facilities, even while you have a bunch of much more expensive engineers sit
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Why would a Business man be Patriotic? (Score:1, Insightful)
The Art of the Deal is about "self interest" not what aligns with everyone else. Wny would anyone think he was running for office out of the goodness of his heart? The "Art" is in exploiting people dim wits.
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That's akin to looking up at 3" of water above your head and deciding the best course of action to take a breath of air is to swim *downward*.
About those claims of a shortage of engineers (Score:2, Interesting)
There has never been, and never will be, a shortage of engineers.
There is, however, a surplus of greed and stupidity amongst the 1% that means people with decades of experience and education are forced to run around like dogs on the street looking for work. Meanwhile none of the 'shareholder activists' and C level executives will ever feel even the slightest ounce of pain, regardless of how many failures they create.
There was no purpose in winning the cold war - we have replicated the worst parts of the Sov
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No need for many engineers (Score:2)
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I would assume the 787 design is essentially finished, which I assume means a big reduction in engineering. Is there anything else in the pipeline, or has commercial aircraft design become too expensive? Hire & fire is nothing new in aerospace.
I thought the same thing. Wouldn't a slow sales period mean that you need less manufacturing workers?
In other news... (Score:3)
In other news... Indian software contract houses today announced new billion dollar contract with Boeing,
Staying with aviation news: The FAA today announced a new initiative to "update" engineering standards covering aircraft manufacture. a spokes person was quoted as saying "certain FAA standards, especially those covering software quality/safety in aircraft have been unnecessarily complex and burdensome to the aircraft industry for years".
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Any link on this news? Couldn't find anything related to that on faa.gov...
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sigh.
Is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes. I work in the industry and while I haven't heard gypsies, migrant Aluminium picker is common (a play on migrant farm workers). And while everyone here obsesses over the negatives, I have seen many positives come out of this, primarily the focus on keeping skills current and the interchange of new ideas.
I have known far to many 'lifers' who've worked at one company for 35 and know exactly what check mark goes where, show up at 8am, leave at 5pm and take a one hour break from 12pm until 1pm. But ask the
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So what? People don't live to work. Those who have routine jobs do them best by using routines. They live outside of the office.
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Years ago, companies used to have big R&D departments where these "lifers" could always try new ideas. Lately, most companies don't even have R&D departments anymore. Now they see anyone even attempting R&D, they call them lazy for reading a book.
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For us European students, it was totally absurd that you would have to spend a large part of your life studying and still end up as a dragged-around gypsy.
For European students it is probably also absurd that you make ridiculous amounts of money after your study doing it. It is a type of work compensated accordingly. One of my co-students and I went separate ways after uni. He went full gypsy. I stayed in a big city. 5 years later he bought a house in cash, I had the down-payment for the loan.
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I figure it'll get worse as Boeing and Airbus reduce the number of unique vehicles in the lines going forward. Airbus is down to only manufacturing the A320, A330, and A380. And Boeing was planning on having three clean sheet designs (Yellowstone) - the 787, a new 737/757/767 variant (pushed back due to the A320 NEO as they developed the 737 MAX to compete), and a 777/747 replacement (likely the 777X). They'll each have variants but they'll probably just be variation in fuselage length for variable passenge
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The Dreamliner's batteries continue to pose a problem,
Do you have a source for that claim? They were an issue a few years back but i'm not seeing anything recent.
Retrain as a coal miner (Score:2)
MAGA
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I did, and he could. It wouldn't take much. Take the farm subsidies, move them over to education. Cut the military budget by 25% and move it to education. Remove the loan programs and just pay colleges a flat fee per student. It's not that difficult, many other countries have free college for their students, some even pay a stipend so the student can eat and have a place to live. Of course, those are first world countries so maybe the comparison isn't fair. ;-)
OTOH, NY just made college free so what d
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Econ 101 - there is no such thing as a free lunch.
You might want to study a little bit more economics and realise that economics is not a zero-sum game and that there is such a thing as an investment with a positive return. Then learn about incentive systems.
Re: Blighted morons? (Score:1)
Trolls gotta troll. They can't discuss econ 102/201 because they failed the prerequisite.
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exactly!
He did (Score:1)
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Right. That was why the stock market hit a record high after he was elected. The market isn't confident.
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Don't blame Trump. Boeing has had some problems with quality recently.
In 2005, FIA [wikipedia.org] (run by Boeing) was partly canceled. The New York Times called [nytimes.com] it "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects." From space.com, [space.com] "But Boeing quickly ran into troubles on the highly ambitious and complex FIA program, which fell years behind schedule and overran its budget by billions of dollars."
In 2011, the SBI Net program was canceled [stltoday.com]. "It was originally envisi
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Presidents don't create jobs.
You mean he was lying about that too? NO, no no. He said it and we must believe!
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0... [nytimes.com]
Since being elected, he's created over 600 thousand already. To wit:
http://www.opposingviews.com/i... [opposingviews.com]
At the top of our agenda is the creation of great high-paying jobs for American workers, and we've made a lot of progress," Trump said, according to Politico. "You see what's going on," Trump added. "You see the numbers. We've created over 600,000 jobs already in a very short period of ti
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