Boeing to lay off hundreds more engineers | Hacker News Reader

Boeing to lay off hundreds more engineers

reuters.com

174 pointsyitchelle153 comments

Hell, my company encouraged retirement by promising medical coverage, then one year later pulled the coverage on those who took the deal.

That's actually evil...

I find that the withdrawing of medical programs by a company is a pretty reliable indicator that it'll fold in a few years, since it's a common "exit-strategy" to earn a few last bucks before the up-top rats jump ship.

Been at two companies who were thriving, and both after only a few months stopped their medical insurance. After that, dozens of people left over 1-2 years, and the company was massively haemorrhaging money due to customer dissatisfaction.

False economy.

Hell, a guy a fence with had surgery, then came to find out he had no health insurance as the company stopped paying the premiums and was POCKETING them, including his contribution. Several years later he finally recovered some of the medical costs in a lawsuit.

everytime i've been offered a company pension somehow months later we were all being laid off.

I think i might be some way of making a quick buck. i'm not sure how. maybe up front commission.

So, the number of employees get's less every year[1] but the market value rises every year[2]. I'm wondering if the wealth distribution, or whatever you all it, is working right, here..

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/268992/change-in-employm... [2] https://www.google.com/finance?q=Boeing&ei=uQf3WOngDM7GsAGJ9...

I'm not sure why you're conflating share price and number of employees with wealth distribution? (not to mention it looks from a casual glance as though it's been largely flat 2014-2017)

In many ways you'd expect a company that dropped a lot of employees to improve it's profitability due to reducing costs, and if it's more profitable it ought to be worth more right? Obviously it's a trade off, ie no R&D means no new products means it's going to run out of things to sell eventually and that should reduce expected future cashflows and thus value etc etc.

Yes, just a casual glance. I usually don't really care about that. But from my point of view the share price says over a long period of time "this company is doing fine". The share price has been on a rise since many years. So, when the company is doing "fine" according to market (and everyone who did nothing except buying stocks wins money!), how is it that the employees get screwed? That's how the market works, yes. But i don't have to be ok with it. Actually, all that stock exchange, share price, money-believing, self-regulating capitalism bullsh*t is just fundamentally screwed, in my opinion.

People got laid off, the stock price when up, and that combination makes you angry?

Unless you're a wealthy shareholder or a masochist, then yes you should be angry about that because you're next.

I was hoping to get the poster to expand on his reply to the other poster's perfectly logical comment:

> In many ways you'd expect a company that dropped a lot of employees to improve it's profitability due to reducing costs, and if it's more profitable it ought to be worth more right? Obviously it's a trade off, ie no R&D means no new products means it's going to run out of things to sell eventually and that should reduce expected future cashflows and thus value etc etc.

If he wanted to talk about long term downtrends in Boeing's R&D or other areas that the market should know will impact its future performance I would enjoy hearing about that. If this is just capitalism bashing with nothing new to offer, I'm not interested.

> So, when the company is doing "fine" according to market (and everyone who did nothing except buying stocks wins money!), how is it that the employees get screwed?

You mean that the people who paid for the company to produce widgets profit when the widgets are profitable? Not the people who designed the widgets?

Thing is, if the widgets fail and the company goes bust the shareholders lose their investment. If it does well, they'll make money. They aren't "doing nothing except buying stocks" - they're risking their investment.

If the company was funded by debt instead of shares, then the debt would be paid down at a fixed rate and then profits would go to the private owner. So even without "the market" the employees don't profit by design unless the company chooses that as an incentive system.

If, however, the company was owned by the workers then they would indeed profit from the widgets and suffer from the failure. Such companies do in fact exist. But they will still lay off staff when it's sensible to do so, and that may well increase profits which are distributed amongst those remaining.

I wonder if economic illiteracy leads to a disdain for capitalism or the other way around.

Could it be though that investors tend to be looked after better than employees and rising income inequality means that less people are able to invest in a meaningful way?

shouldn't be up to ex-middle management to form start ups and start innovating with some of the laid off staff?

Probably because rich people own stock and engineers draw upper-middle class salaries. When rich people can get richer while paying fewer people upper-middle class salaries, you get growing wealth inequality.

So many things wrong in this comment:

1. The shareholders own the stock. Not the employees. (though the employees can be shareholders). So the metric you are looking at, is the number of shareholders and distribution of the stock in the hands of these shareholders.

2. The Market Cap is a useless metric unless you specify the volatility of the stock. If your stock can depreciate 30% intra-day, then a 50% increase is not really a wealth appreciation unless you realise it (sell the stock). But, whoops, then you are no longer a shareholder.

IIRC, the Washington workers are union while the South Carolina workers are not? (Though I don't know about the specific roles/titles involved in this round. But the article raises the open question about S.C. jobs.)

Also, I wonder whether and how much of this work is moving overseas.

P.S. Quick google reveals:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/15/these...

http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/1...

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing...

The last two are talking about fit, finishing, and parts, and they cite the machinists' union. One might call that a bit apples versus oranges with respect to the OP. Nonetheless, at the time there was language (PR and corporate-speak) about no jobs leaving Everett and potential increased demand increasing headcount there.

The headline says "engineers", so they're probably not in a union no matter what location they occupy.

Nope, Washington State Boeing engineers are 100% in a union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Professional_Engine... http://www.speea.org/

IIRC, even most (all?) software engineers working for Boeing in Washington State are required to join the union.

I worked for Boeing in Colorado on a major govt satellite program several years ago (non-union in CO of course), and when I received a WARN notice when our contract was ending I began looking around the company for other positions. All the SW Eng jobs I could find in the commercial aviation BU in Washington were listed as being "Union." Blech.

I ended up leaving the company after I figured out that Boeing's hiring and transfer policies meant it was easier to quit and apply for jobs as an external applicant, rather than applying as an internal candidate.

I don't know if it's any different for software engineers, but I have a friend who did an industrial engineering internship there a couple years ago. He was treated exactly like a full-time employee (full benefits, 401k, etc.) and had the option to join the union or not. It was barely any more for him to join so he did.

False. As an engineer you have the option of joining SPEEA, but it is not a requirement.

Joining the union offers some benefits, and some people do so for personal/political reasons.

One useful benefit was publication on anonymous salary information around raise time. You see exactly where you stand without violating the privacy of your peers.

Source: I'm a former Boeing employee (DS9 - Real-time systems simulation engineer)

Right. But if you don't join, you still have to pay union dues, right? That requirement kind of blurs things in my mind.

I believe many of the engineers are in the SPEEA:

http://www.speea.org/

"Since January 2016, Boeing has cut 1,332 engineering and technical jobs from its Washington workforce".

As a Washingtonian I am _so happy_ we gave Boeing 8.7 billion in tax breaks and incentives. They're taking that money and using it to maintain their work force elsewhere :/

Is there any information indicating that they are moving their workforce elsewhere?

The select quoting of the article here implies that the market demand is waning:

> 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.

> "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."

Sounds like cuts across the board, not cuts in Washington and growth elsewhere.

I haven't read anything specific and I could be wrong but it feels like it's just the trend: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance-...

>>taking that money and using it to maintain their work force elsewhere

I'd look at Chicago. That's where the HQ and executives are, right?

Very common. Another fun example is the huge tax break MN gave to Northwest Airlines to build an Airbus maintenance facility in northern MN. They took the tax break and never built the facility. Or how about cable companies getting tax breaks to build out high speed internet in rural areas? One could go on...

It's also a sign the company is circling the drain, it's the more qualified people that tend to take voluntary redundancies and take their chances in the job market. This leaves a lot of dead weight behind.

If you do layoffs repeatedly while not hiring anyone, yes, it can be very bad. But the aircraft industry is cyclical. I suspect Boeing has done layoffs/hiring/layoffs/hiring cycles repeatedly in the past.

Tax breaks simply should not exist on any level. I can't think of something more absurd than picking people to give tax breaks to.

I have a friend who's a long-time engineer at Boeing (in Washington). He'd always complain that union rules were strict to the point of ludicrousness, eg. if he got a new desktop computer he was prohibited from plugging it in himself; he had to file a ticket and get it plugged in by a member of whatever union had staked a claim to that task.

Not really related to the article, but yeah, I can't imagine that level of union-driven bureaucracy is good for productivity.

This isn't union - this is just how huge corporations work. I worked for Verizon and they did the same thing - everything was locked down and you had to file a Remedy ticket to get anything done (ugh).

Verizon is union too.

Perhaps, but the point is true. Large, traditional companies do this sort of thing.

Sometimes because of unions. Others times for "security reasons" or "3rd party contract" reasons, etc.

I don't know... I work for a (non-unionized) company about half the size of Boeing, and we don't have anywhere near that level of bureaucracy, so I have a hard time accepting the premise that "that's just how things have to be." I'm sure there are a lot of contributing factors, but I don't have a hard time imagining unions contributing to process creep by mandating the allocation of tasks in a non-optimal way.

I'm no hardcore anti-unionist, but this particular situation seems like a very plausible late-stage union failure mode.

But your company is smaller. I work for a company smaller still and the amount of dumb bureaucracy is even less than yours probably.

Also, culturally the aerospace industry is very rule and procedure heavy, for good reason.

I've seen it in big and small (10 people companies), it just depends on having someone in HR that cares about shit like this and the authority to do something about it.

Sometimes you can't change a light bulb at a small company, sometimes at a big one you're first job is to assembly you're own desk.

I could easily imagine an incident where someone plugged something in the wrong socket, something got destroyed, and it was codified in policy that only the people who certifiably know what they're doing are allowed to plug stuff into sockets. It takes just one to ruin it for everyone.

Like plugging a vacuum cleaner into a UPS.

Which actually happened at a subsidiary of British telecom I worked at - the cleaners unplugged the accounts receivable unix system.

It was a POS system the finance director brought and caused no end of problems at one point we were unable to cut a BACS tape for over 6 months

I work at Verizon and they gave me a MBP with root access...so this is not universal at the company.

I think both sides think it's ridiculous. But it serves a purpose for the union: job protection.

Corporations want as few people doing as much work as possible. And they will have no qualms about laying people off to achieve that (TFA). Putting absolute restrictions on tasks puts a floor on employment. It's not ideal, but somewhat effective.

It is indeed effective, and interesting.

Whenever people talk about unionizing or professionalizing software development, I think things of this. Even if it ridiculous for both sides, it is indicative of a group of workers, and an employer, who have decided exactly what their job is (and is not), and what the rules and training pertaining to that job are.

Contrast with software development, which is a free-for-all - mainly for good, but the complete absence of standards or authorities doesn't always seem like a good thing. Just occasionally I find myself thinking that some baseline standards for, say, source control or testing would do everyone a world of good.

You get to appreciate the idea more as you get older too.

There's a reason you see more older (and expensive) aircraft mechanics working on the latest greatest tech, as opposed to older developers.

>> There's a reason you see more older (and expensive) aircraft mechanics working on the latest greatest tech, as opposed to older developers.

What do you suspect those reasons may be? Also, what would you describe as latest greatest tech in the context of aerospace industry?

> What do you suspect those reasons may be?

Not gp, but in the context of this thread, the answer is obvious: Unions.

I was alluding to unions, and age discrimination. The tech part isn't really interesting in this context.

Imagine if you weren't allowed to debug or write tests for your own code.

Until we come to a mature understanding of the place that unions have in our working economy, I hope we never see this kind of bureaucracy form in our profession.

Writing tests for your own code is a relatively recent phenomenon.

When I worked at MSFT as a developer in the early 2000s, we had dedicated test developers who wrote tests. You wrote your code and checked it in after a code review and as long as it passed the integration tests, the test developers wrote their (what would now be called) unit tests and checked them in to make sure someone else didn't break your code.

I think writing your own tests gained favor in the early/mid-2000s with the "extreme programming" and TDD movements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development)

Exactly. If union rules had been written down, even in 2005, developers would be forbidden from writing, possibly even running, tests, lest they take away the jobs of the testers. Unit testing would in practice be illegal, never mind (gasp) DevOps.

>If union rules had been written down, even in 2005

What are "union rules"? Each union is free to bargain their demands collectively with the employer. If your members think such a rule is stupid, they won't demand it. But your lack of knowledge and disdain of unions is noted.

Even running itself. That would actually mean seeing what you wrote. That would be bad. Takes away potential job creation opportunities.

Actually that's exactly how it is done in highly structured "clean room" software projects. If you fixed the "bug" in your software, then the process team couldn't fix the "bug" in the process that resulted in the bug in the software.

Could you give me an example of such a project with this kind of restriction?

Space industry software is siloed in exactly this way. I write code, someone else unit tests it (C), someone else entirely writes integration tests (Java), then someone else writes a final integration test (Java).

It's horrendously redundant and wouldn't be applicable to most software, but it does work well; when bugs are picked up by the third or fourth layer of testers, which happens from time to time.

Neat. As long as there is reliable communication throughout the different teams, I guess this kind of thing makes sense for space tech and other highly critical software.

Is this based on seniority, as in the new guys have to write the tests? That way you would at least have some experience with how to code in an easily testable fashion.

Imagine if you weren't allowed to debug or write tests for your own code.

Yes, this is exactly how we QA in fields where software errors can cost lives.

I could see the merit in this, would you mind elaborating a little bit?

My experience is in medical equipment -- not quite the mess that medical devices are, thankfully. The general idea is a combination of redundancy, clean-room methods, and people whose domain expertise is in testing and edge case analysis.

From a personal perspective, I find that trying to design tests as the developer of the code to be tested is fundamentally difficult -- I have embedded assumptions around the functionality of the code that make it cognitively difficult to fully envision complex failure scenarios. Some of the best test producers I've worked with have had no development background at all.

> Whenever people talk about unionizing or professionalizing software development, I think things of this.

There would never be a union so long as fully-qualified software engineers are in-demand - even the deluge of web-designers from the dot-com boom (and today's coding-camp graduates) haven't seen a rise in poor working conditions or unemployment because of the over-supply of labor.

I do advocate some kind of professional certification or charter status for software-engineers involved in safety-critical systems - like how a certified civil engineer needs to sign-off on bridge and building designs - but that's largely for the public's benefit, not solely their own.

Corporations, startups, small/medium sized businesses - and yes even average people want as few people doing as much work as possible. Would you want 3 plumbers to show up to your house to fix a leaking toilet? I do understand the history behind the rise of unions. And I generally think that unions have been a positive force in the world (and some current industries could probably benefit from unionization), however plenty of unions to this day give unions a bad name. Unions should protect workers against egregious corporate retaliation. They shouldn't be protecting workers jobs at the expense of a companies fiscal survival.

Depends. I have 11 bathrooms in my house, so I might need 3 to get the job done properly. Also, I bet one of those plumbers could fix the leak in my pool.

Ah yes, lets all gather for some ol' union tales. The evergreen of US politics, taught to high school students all over the country.

Meanwhile there is a mandatory arbitration clause in your contract and the Department of Labor says you are exempt from overtime pay because ???

But not to worry, all switchboard operators working for a company with less than 750 stations also don't get paid for all hours worked. There is no fairness and reason to the Fair Labor act, it just means someone who is probably long gone lobbied to royally fuck computer specialists over. And here we are today.

Can you imagine police unions agreeing to arbitration?

Not sure what your point is but police union contracts have arbitration clauses.

When I worked at Boeing as a design engineer, at one point my design was put on a test rig out at the factory. Some adjustment was required, and I stepped forward to do it. Some union rep stepped in front of me, and told me I wasn't allowed to touch a tool. I was supposed to direct some union guy to turn a wrench this way or that.

That's not union, any place I've ever worked the bigger the IT department grows the tighter the computers and networks are locked down.

This reminds me of an article about unions in hollywood i read sometime ago. It wwnt somewhere along the lines of a guy talking to an actor on a set, and he brushes some dirt off the actor's shoulder. Later, he is approached by a women who asks him never to do that again because it was her union approved job to brush the casts clothing.

union driven bureaucracy is known to have extreme consequences in the name of job security

Movies are different. That could be a continuity problem. Actors are clean or dirty for a reason. 24, for example put a lot of effort into costume continuity. Shot over months, 10 copies of the same clothes, looking slightly worse as the day wears on.

For every anecdote one unearths about bad union work rules, I'm sure that you can find a hundred about a union successfully looking out for the interest of a member. Is best not to be distracted by anecdotes.

Speaking of anecdotes, my best union anecdote was when I was working at a construction company as a seasonal general laborer.

One day my job was to clean out some office trailers out in the back lot so they could haul them to a new site in a few days. To do this I needed a vacuum cleaner (which they had) and a generator to run it (which they also had). No problem, I said.

Until I found out that the generator was so low on oil that it wouldn't start due to the low oil cutoff switch. The oil was black and needed to be changed.

No problem again, I knew where the oil was, and I knew how to change it so I started to do just that. Until a union mechanic yelled at me and asked me what the H I was doing and that only a mechanic could do that job. I said "Ok, I'll just top it off so I can start it" ,and he said "Nope, you can't do that". I thought he was joking and kind of laughed until he called my boss over to explain it to me.

The mechanics, of course, were busy, so wouldn't get a chance to change my oil until next week, so I told my boss that I wouldn't be able to do my job. He said he'd take care of it.

And take care of it he did -- he said to go to the trailers and wait, and sure enough, a union driver showed up with a tractor trailer towed generator -- it must have been a 500KW generator, maybe larger. The union generator operator showed up soon after and started it up for me, and said he'd be back at quitting time to shut it down.

So all day long a 500KW generator sucked down 10 (?) gallons of fuel per hour (not to mention the wear and tear on that huge generator and the cost of the driver and generator operator)... just so I could run a shop-vac.

All because I wasn't allowed to put a few dollars of oil into a 5kw generator due to union rules.

That is when I lost all respect for unions.

So, because of one incident you lost all respect for all union activities? That's like losing respect for all Chinese because one wasn't acting rationally.

There are a dozen examples of similar incidents in this thread alone.

I've not witnessed such an incident first hand, but as soon as I do I'll likely think "wow, they weren't kidding" and lose all respect for union activities from one incident.

>There are a dozen examples of similar incidents in this thread alone

By anonymous posters, most likely who have never actually worked a union job and are just repeating something they've read in threads like these.

Yes, unions have dumb rules. Do you think those rules were developed before or after corporations dictated onerous policy? So who are the good guys?

That's not the only incident of inane situations due to blind adherence to union rules that I saw, just the most egregious. Even among union workers the rules were sometimes unpalatable like the strict seniority rules that make it impossible to hire the best person for the job since the most senior person gets his/her pick of new jobs -- they supported the rules only because they knew that one day they would be the senior one.

I don't think "losing respect for all Chinese because one wasn't acting rationally" is a fair analogy, more like "losing respect for all Chinese because they not only follow arbitrary and counter-productive rules, but they actively support them and will fight to keep them"

So we should just accept a verifiable stupid state of affairs because there's probably a good thing on the flip side? Never mind that part of looking out for someone's interests could well be expected to include coming up with a way of doing so that doesn't require your members to behave in a verifiably stupid way?

We usually call that "ideological blinkers".

I worked at Boeing as well with a few guys that had been programming since the 60's. They did a pretty good job of walling us off from the rest of the company so we could get things done ourselves. We ran everything. Version control, Jenkins, our computer lab, etc. It was great, but the best part was getting to pick the brains of people who'd been in it for 40 years. Them being in the missile warning field, they witnessed, up close, communication networks and related technologies grow from the beginning.

But we shouldn't dissolve worker protections entirely just because you don't like some of the rules

These anecdotes are always fun but do they really provide much insight into the role played by a union? I've never worked a union job but I have family that do (railroads in US) and while they complain about these kind of things and wish they didn't have to be in the union, when something bad happens the union is basically the only thing keeping them from getting canned for something not their fault. My cousin got hurt on the job because of another worker just making a mistake but he was going to get canned for it anyways. The union prevented it and saved his job (and healthcare etc). But at the same time there are a ton of anecdotes about similar silly-sounding situations, so where is the truth?

I feel like union bashing has just become part of our culture, just like complaining about state road crews (always 1 guy working and 5 guys standing around!) but the joke may be on us when we allow our infrastructure to be privatized and our unions to be killed and we realize that we work for the market, not the other way around.

Correct on SC being non-union

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/15/these...

Despite a very active campaign for several years.

No doubt they will also move more work to their Moscow Design Center: https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/boeing-spreads-77...

There's 3 jobs total open in Moscow https://jobs.boeing.com/location/russia-jobs/185/2017370/2.

Not if Trump cancels the Boeing-Iran deal.

How does that work out with ITAR?

It probably has to be scoped aggressively tight to reduce unlawful export and reviewed by lawyers and business partners that manage regulatory risk.

Given the troubles that the Russian aerospace industry has with fake diplomas, I doubt that Moscow is where they are moving those jobs.

https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/fake-diplomas-fake-moder...

Linking technicans' vocational school diploma troubles in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and aerospace engineers hiring in Moscow is a bit of a stretch, isn't it?

It's like linking Facebook performance to Obamacare website launch troubles.

Man, I really feel for these workers. When, say, a back end Java developer gets laid off, it's usually not too hard to land on your feet, given the tons of companies that need these skills. If you're an experience aerospace engineer working on large commerical jets, where else do you go in the US besides Boeing and maybe Lockheed Martin?

I wonder if there will be job offers from a certain large country in Asia?

>> If you're an experience aerospace engineer working on large commerical jets, where else do you go in the US besides Boeing and maybe Lockheed Martin?

You're kidding[1], right? Beyond the aerospace industry, I can think of more than a few places where the skillset of a talented aerospace engineer would be very much desireable.

[1] https://www.artillerymarketing.com/fs/top-100-aerospace-comp...

Airbus

where else do you go in the US besides Boeing and maybe Lockheed Martin

Besides the big players like Airbus, GE, Northop etc there are a huge number of consulting firms that do specialist work in every aspect of aerospace engineering.

if there was only one place for these folks to work, they wouldn't be commanding very significant salaries.

Shitcan 245 engineers...immediately posture to hire 345 more?[1]

[1] https://jobs.boeing.com/search-jobs/engineer

Because every engineer is the same. /s

fire seniors, hire juniors?

The article mentions 'increased competition'. Is Boeing facing a hard time competing against rivals say Airbus? Are Boeing's latest planes less competitive or is there less orders in the pipeline all across the industry, including at Airbus? I wish the article went into more detail here, this would have been informative.

> Is Boeing facing a hard time competing against rivals say Airbus?

Airbus is on a strong run at the moment.

However what I think 'competition' means in this sense is design and construction competition within Boeing. The 787 was a $30 billion lesson to Boeing on how to globalise aircraft design and production. They made a mess of it, at least on the initial -8 model, but as a result seem to have learned how to work with global risk-sharing partners; partners who employ their own engineers at their own cost and who design components ( wings, fuselages etc ) at their own cost and risk to a specification provided by Boeing. Much like engine manufacturers already do.

And as a result Boeing can also move towards a final-assembly-only paradigm, which further reduces workforce requirements.

Smaller companies like Bombardier have already had to make those changes in order to survive and Boeing is being proactive in following them.

Unfortunately, hiring for aircraft programs these days is very Bang-Bang. A350 program starts, Airbus hires thousands of contract mech engineers. A350 program winds down, those people are let go. I think that Boeing is similar.

Lay-offs do not necessarily imply 'increased competition', I think that hasn't changed a whole lot recently. The model is just moving towards highly contractual work with limited managerial permanent roles for the cream of the crop.

> Unfortunately, hiring for aircraft programs these days is very Bang-Bang.

i'm given to understand that's pretty common across all of aerospace. get contract, hire, finish contract, fire. it makes for an endless supply of headlines, but isn't actually a surprise to the employees.

Product is the stock price. Cost out so executives keep bonuses. Solid tactics

For a few years during the current CEO's reign, but how will the next CEO make their mark when the CEO musical chairs game continues?

First they came for the janitors...

http://www.vdare.com/letters/first-they-came-for-the-janitor...

In case anyone misses the point

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

My favourite bit there:

> people so willfully stupid that they will cut each other`s throats while the bankers drain them dry.

Divide and conquer. Proven classic.

Who else thinks slowing sales is probably due to a supply glut from low interest rates? I know low rates has meant its prime time to invest in capital goods, especially expensive ones. Perhaps they've sold new planes to everyone who wants them, and there's less and less companies interested in buying? Pure speculation, though.

Until the people who painstakingly build the stuff are allowed to own the results of their efforts , aka worker ownership we will see more and more of this shit everywhere.

They do own the results of their efforts. It is called their remuneration. If they want to own part of the company they can buy stock in it. It is public. No one is stopping anyone from working at a worker coop if they so desire.

> Until the people who painstakingly build the stuff are allowed to own the results of their efforts

Seriously? Haven't we learned anything from the 20th century and the deadly effects of collectivization? We're talking millions of death here.

If worker ownership would produce superior outcomes it would prevail in the market. But in reality all practical experience shows that it does not. The old left excuse that workers are poor and can not start business can no longer works.

The solution to the problems of the world has never been and will almost certainly never be worker ownership of the means of production.

The market will be irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

You are putting far too much trust into speculative market forces.

Modern-style companies have existed for a couple hundred years now. For some reason, co-ops (employee ownership) has had very limited success in that whole time, and across all free market countries. Could that reason be that it's a less effective method of providing value? In economics terms, I think what we have here is the tragedy of the commons - if all employees equally benefit from improving company's situation, what incentive I as an industrious and creative employee have to make the company better? - I'll do the hard work and will only reap a tiny fraction of the reward. Contrast that with an industrious and creative owner, who reaps a large part of the reward, and thus has a huge incentive to constantly improve his company. It is very visible in communist economies - the companies are owned by everyone so people care about them as much as they care about the pavement on the street or a public toilet.

Worker owned does not mean everybody earns the same.

Congrats, you just invented the modern tech company.

Modern tech companies are usually not worker owned, they give away stocks to investors.

> It is very visible in communist economies - the companies are owned by everyone so people care about them as much as they care about the pavement on the street or a public toilet.

In existing and past "communist" economies the companies are NOT directly owned by people who work there. They are owned by the government who employs the workers.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

The idea is that the people are the owners and the government is only managing the work.

Which is not the same as direct ownership. It's similar to the dynamic of democracy at work in the US at federal level vs. local municipal level. If large-scale federal level democracy doesn't work too well, we're not immediately dismissing democracy outright, right?

The public bailed out the mistakes of the capital class in 2008, and will do so again

The bailed out 'the capital class'? That is total nonsense. They bailed out specific industry that have good political connections.

That has abosolutly nothing to do with why worker owned coops don't succede in the market.

I don't really mind what you say (don't care about the issue), but I do care when someone very confidently extends a trend into the future, here even into eternity, based on nothing but "it never worked before". That's just extreme intellectual laziness, which is fine, until you start commenting and pretend you know more than you do. There is way too little argument in your argument.

I said 'almost certainly' because after a 200 year trend that is a reasonable thing to say. Plus we have theories of economics of the firm that analyses the problems with these sort of organsiations.

So I feel reasonable confident saying 'almost certaint'.

> because after a 200 year trend that is a reasonable thing to say

I don't think you understand how history works. Don't know if this is merely risible or sad.

> involuntary layoffs

> involuntary reduction

As opposed to what?

"Boss, 231 of us decided to voluntarily be let go, effective immediately. Yeah, we know, it's a bummer. We also decided to take three months severance pay at half salary. Hey, thanks for everything. Have a nice day!"

I sometimes wonder about what might lie behind the twisted language often used by reporters.

Voluntary reductions are through offers made to older employees for early retirement. It's a very common way of reducing staff, but it's usually done over a number of years (to reach the target).

As opposed to voluntary separations. Many years ago the company I work for offered packages to qualified employees who wanted to leave. People who were already looking or just weren't very happy had the opportunity to pocket (IIRC) six months worth of pay after signing the standard promise not to sue.

Usually the way these things work is company management has a reduction goal, and if they meet it there aren't any layoffs. If they don't... well, voluntary becomes involuntary in some cases.

Companies sometimes offer people good deals to leave due to slowing business. If you opted into this you would have been voluntarily laid off. If enough people do it, then there are no involuntary layoffs.

Japan Airlines did something similar with early retirement a few years back and offered their employees the chance to retire early in order to cut costs.

People might voluntarily take a buyout package.

Never seen one myself but it's entirely possible for a business to solicit volunteers to be laid off [1] or take early retirement [2].

[1] e.g. http://www.nyguild.org/time-inc-news-details/items/spots-ill...

[2] e.g. http://www.wcpo.com/money/local-business-news/kroger-offers-...

Yes, the notable one I know of ULA (United Launch Alliance) doing a bunch of volunteered lay offs where they went around asking their old timers to see if they would be willing to go into retirement.

I had a friend who worked at a company asking for people to be voluntarily laid off. They paid for grad school, and this got said person out of owing them years of service in repayment. Saved someone else from being laid off, and said person was able to find a job they liked much better.

I think that is reasonable.

"Folks our company didn't do well this year, we can only sustain X at out burn rate. We are willing to extend Y offer until Z date for those of who are willing to volunteer for a lay off"

Much better than firing by force.

Would this not select for firing your best workers (who aren't worried about finding another job)?

It provides incentive for those disposed to leaving anyway.

It does. But if you do the opposite, the layoff is likely to still inspire those best people to start looking on their own if they did not already do so before. And they are the ones most likely to find something and follow through.

Layoffs often have an echo effect, where a wave of layoffs is followed by a wave of resignations. Open offers fold that second, unpredictable wave into the controlled first one. If the nature of your business requires a certain amount of workforce continuity, the added predictability of an open offer can be well worth it.

+1 I had many co-workers at yahoo do a voluntary layoff. It's a great gig btw. If you were already planning on leaving instead of quitting you get a few months severance

I've seen at least one at Lockheed (Sunnyvale) between 2009 and 2013. People close or at retirement age and still working were encouraged with packages. Then came the rounds on involuntary.

I once had the fortune of working at a company that offered voluntary lay offs while I was in the middle of negotiating an offer at another company. I basically ran to the HR office to volunteer in exchange of multiple months of severance.

They are extending offers for "Voluntary Layoffs" to a large portion of the engineering workforce. The offer is 1 week of pay per year of service. Many people have taken it, either to pursue new work or to retire early. These offers have been extended to varying areas of the company over the last year or so as they try and get to their headcount targets.

My aunt volunteered to be laid off from her airline. She also traded her pension for a small buyout and lifetime standby airfare for her family.

Smart move. The pension was basically killed when the company was bought out and she retains the free flights to this day. One time I flew with her and my cousin to Texas for dinner during a summer vacation. I think my ticket was $50.

Isn't that 1.5 months pay?

yes. maybe it's better at half speed after considering the companies cash flow situation?

I think "layoff" means "involuntary layoff". No need to dramatize by adding "involuntary". I think that was my point. The word only adds drama. Everyone knows what a layoff is.

What many have described as voluntary layoffs I would probably call "voluntary resignation with incentives".

The company is asking you: Are you willing to quit your job and pretend we let you go?

It is wrapped around a layoff to be nice to the employee because this activates unemployment benefits, etc

What happens if nobody, not one person, volunteers? They layoff as many people as they need to, involuntarily, of course, as the term implies.

I had a case some thirty years ago when I worked at a shitty unionized company where I was asked (muscled by the union really) to choose between resigning or being laid off. The options had some convoluted combinations of benefits and legal implications (union stuff) that were hard for my younger self to decipher. I ended-up opting to resign, on paper. It was then executed as a layoff.

Events like this highlight the fallacy that big company jobs are stable and secure, while startup jobs are risky. I think the Expected Value of a big company salary stream is probably slightly higher than that of a series of startup salaries, but the difference isn't nearly as large as people fear.

This is a byproduct of the market DESIGN in aerospace. By having a duopoly rather than either a monopoly or wider competition, you're forcing the margins down to near zero. This means that there is always a CLEAR replacement option for every product made by Boeing or Airbus, and the customers (the airlines) know it. If you had more players (embraer, gulfstream, bombardier, china?) you could have better competition, but there are few large body jet providers in the market. Granted this problem stems from the airplane companies own strategy of trying to get airlines to go single model (all 737s for example) to save on repair/maintenance.

Economic theory wise its a fascinating market issue because you have clear view of the buyers and the incentives in the marketplace (also both big players get huge govt subsidies).

I think you might be underestimating the impact of slackening demand. Emerging market airlines put in a ton of orders over the past 10 years, now we're seeing them slash airfare prices and/or cancel orders due to continued pressure. You can also point to state-owned/supported enterprises in the Middle East and China which are terrible allocators of capital and have therefore encouraged the glut. Nevermind the strategic imperative of the U.S. and Europe to have exclusive access to a producer of worldwide transports during times of war.

There are many examples of duopolies who do just fine. I think you are ignoring the negative influence of ambitious countries in this industry.

Just FYI there are still markets out there [1] and Boeing is going to try to take advantage of them [2].

[1] http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-iran-airlines-snap-story.... [2] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/21/482955544/...

What are some good examples of duopolies that do well for both of the players and the market?

I would have thought there would be hiring spree instead given upcoming large spending in defense and Boeing would be in strong position to capture good portion of it. Why this isn't the case?

short term margins.

Uncertainty. Trump seems to flip his public stance on issues after having a 10 minute conversation with someone.

All these jobs will be replaced by cheap Indian H-1B visa holders very soon.

As opposed to 'Boeing keeps on hundreds of staff they no longer have a need for'?

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