Government Overreach: NLRB, Big Unions & Obama Against American Jobs in South Carolina

Boeing has a right to build a factory anywhere it chooses. Boeing needed a new plant to produce more 787 Dreamliners and built a $750 million facility in South Carolina, which is one of 22 right-to-work states. Workers cannot be forced to join a union as a condition of employment.


Acting NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon, an Obama appointee, does Obama's bidding and claims that, by building the plant in the Palmetto State, Boeing "retaliated against union workers. Obama's  other recess appointment,  Craig Becker is also another Obama waterboy on the National Labor Relations Board. Becker served as a  a top union lawyer and has argued that workers should not have any right to opt out of union representation. He also counseled a large local union founded as a subsidiary of the corrupt  Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), another favorite of Obama.


No jobs in Washington are being transferred to South Carolina; in fact, Boeing's Washington facility gained 2,000 jobs. That was not good enough for Obama and his NLRB is suing Boeing and trying to stop their production in South Carolina. That is hard to believe even for the shit-bird sitting in The White House. It is stupid politics and the Democrats will come out badly for this autocratic overreach. 

Greedy Engineering- GE to Transfer Top Aviation Technology to the Chinese

We have heard this lie before:


…"For the most part, Western aviation executives say the Chinese are simply too far behind in both civilian and military airplane technology to cause any real fears anytime soon — although it does put pressure on Boeing and Airbus to continue to innovate and stay technologically ahead of China"…

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G.E. to Share Jet Technology With China in New Joint Venture

By DAVID BARBOZA, CHRISTOPHER DREW and STEVE LOHR

Published: January 17, 20 NY Times

As China strives for leadership in the world’s most advanced industries, it sees commercial jetliners — planes that may someday challenge the best from Boeing and Airbus — as a top prize.

And no Western company has been more aggressive in helping China pursue that dream than one of the aviation industry’s biggest suppliers of jet engines and airplane technology, General Electric.

On Friday, during the visit of the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, to the United States, G.E. plans to sign a joint-venture agreement in commercial aviation that shows the tricky risk-and-reward calculations American corporations must increasingly make in their pursuit of lucrative markets in China.

G.E., in the partnership with a state-owned Chinese company, will be sharing its most sophisticated airplane electronics, including some of the same technology used in Boeing’s new state-of-the-art 787 Dreamliner.

For G.E., the pact is a chance to build upon an already well-established business in China, where the company has booming sales of jet engines, mainly to Chinese airlines that are now buying Boeing and Airbus planes. But doing business in China often requires Western multinationals like G.E. to share technology and trade secrets that might eventually enable Chinese companies to beat them at their own game — by making the same products cheaper, if not better.

The other risk is that Western technologies could help China play catch-up in military aviation — a concern underscored last week when the Chinese military demonstrated a prototype of its version of the Pentagon’s stealth fighter, even though the plane could be a decade away from production.

The first customer for the G.E. joint venture will be the Chinese company building a new airliner, the C919, that is meant to be China’s first entry in competition with Boeing and Airbus.

For the most part, Western aviation executives say the Chinese are simply too far behind in both civilian and military airplane technology to cause any real fears anytime soon — although it does put pressure on Boeing and Airbus to continue to innovate and stay technologically ahead of China.

G.E., which said it had briefed the commerce, defense and state departments on details of the deal, acknowledges that pairing up with a Chinese firm is a delicate dance. But because the commercial aircraft market in China is expected to generate sales of more than $400 billion over the next two decades, it is not a party the company is willing to miss.

Eventually, G.E. executives say, China will become a potent player in the commercial jetliner market, and the company wants to be a major supplier to the emerging Chinese producers.

“They are committed for the long term and they have every probability of being successful,” said John G. Rice, vice chairman of G.E. “We can participate in that or sit on the sidelines. We’re not about sitting on the sidelines.”

Mr. Rice also said that the Chinese joint venture partner — the aerospace design and equipment manufacturer Aviation Industry Corporation of China, or Avic — has supplied G.E. with some parts for jet engines for years. And he said he had personally known Avic’s president for a decade.

“This venture is a strategic move that we made after some thought and consideration, with a company we know,” Mr. Rice said. “This isn’t something we were forced into” by the Chinese government.

G.E.’s new joint venture in Shanghai will focus on avionics — the electronics for communications, navigation, cockpit displays and controls. G.E. will be contributing its leading-edge avionics technology — a high-performance core computer system that operates as the avionics brain of Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner.

The joint venture has a ready customer in the C919’s builder, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, which is also a government-owned enterprise. The plane will be a single-aisle airliner, carrying up to 200 passengers, intended to compete with Boeing 737s and Airbus 320s. Although the Chinese hope to begin deliveries in 2016, analysts say the schedule may well slip.

With or without the C919, the Chinese market for commercial airliners is already huge and growing fast — a big market for G.E. jet engines and other systems, as well as Boeing and Airbus planes. But if the C919 grabs any significant slice of that market, it would represent a new, expanded opportunity for G.E. The company has already been chosen to supply engines for the Chinese plane, through its long-standing partnership with Snecma of France. Though the world’s largest producer of jet engines, G.E. has trailed other suppliers of avionics in overall sales, behind Honeywell, Rockwell Collins and Thales, all of whom competed for the C919 business.

Several other American companies have also been chosen as suppliers for the C919 aircraft, providing power generators, fuel tanks, hydraulic controls, brakes, tires and other gear. The roster of United States suppliers includes Rockwell Collins, Honeywell, Hamilton Sundstrand, Parker Aerospace, Eaton Corporation and Kidde Aerospace.

In fact, the corporate competition for contracts on the C919 became a “frenzy,” said Mark Howes, president of Honeywell Aerospace Asia Pacific. The Chinese government, he said, had made it clear to Western companies that they should be “willing to share technology and know-how.”

But the G.E. avionics joint venture, analysts say, appears to be the deepest relationship yet and involves sharing the most confidential technology. And G.E.’s partner, Avic, also supplies China’s military aircraft and weapons systems.

G.E. executives would not comment on the details of the joint venture. But a person involved in the talks said the 50-50 venture is for 50 years. G.E., the person said, is putting in technology and start-up capital of $200 million. Avic will initially contribute $700 million, the person said, including the cost of a new research and development lab already under construction.

To address American government security concerns, the joint venture in Shanghai will occupy separate offices and be equipped with computer systems that cannot pass data to computers in Avic’s military division, G.E. executives say. And anyone working in the joint venture must wait two years before they can work on military projects at Avic, they added.

While Boeing and Airbus would probably rather not see their suppliers help the Chinese so much, both those companies must also constantly balance the risks and rewards of operating in China.

Boeing has subcontracted parts work to China for many years, and it is expanding a joint venture in Tianjin that makes parts with composite materials for several of its planes. And Airbus has built a factory that assembles A320s in the same city.

Boeing has “opted to accept the reality of both partnering and competing with China,” Boeing’s chief executive, W. James McNerney Jr., said in a speech last year.

Indeed, China’s push into the commercial aircraft industry will probably increase exports from American aviation equipment manufacturers for years to come, according to industry analysts. Whether China succeeds or fails, the state-owned companies will keep investing, generating sales for the suppliers.

The real concern lies further head, according to a study of China’s strategy included in a report published in November by a bipartisan Congressional advisory group, the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

The group concluded that China’s huge state subsidies for its own industry, its requirements that foreign companies provide technology and know-how to gain access to the Chinese market, along with the close ties between its commercial and military aviation sectors all raise concerns and “bear watching.”

The big aviation equipment makers say that, by now, they are experienced at grappling with matters of technology transfer in China. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Kent L. Statler, an executive vice president for commercial aviation at Rockwell Collins, observes that his employees often ask whether the company is trading its future for immediate sales in China.

“I think you’re naïve if you don’t take into account that you could be standing up a future competitor,” Mr. Statler said. Any company in a global business is in a race, he added, and staying ahead is the only defense. “At the end of the day, our technologies and processes have to continue to improve,” Mr. Statler said. “It comes down to who can innovate faster.”

Boeing 787 Dreamliner, Is the Dream a Nightmare?

The least amount of necessary parts involved with a working machine, the better. Simply stated, there are less things to go wrong. In planning the 787 Dreamliner, Boeing has built a manufacturing model dependent upon an intricate supply chain of sub-contractors and vendors. That means instead of one accounting and finance division, the Dreamliner is dependent upon the financial divisions of every vendor. Those vendors are supplied by other vendors and all, starting with Boeing, will naturally attempt to shift the financial burden up and down the line. Finance rules in manufacturing. At an optimum, everyone shares in the profits. The down side is a sharing in losses.

Boeing, late for its first deliveries, has been saying it has a nuts and bolts (fastening problem), caused by late vendors. Sounds more like the old cash flow problem to me. It only makes sense that vendors and sub-contractors only make money when a project flows on time. Start a delay chain with multiple parties and you have a growing multitude of problems.

Perhaps it would have been better to call it a Dreamliner after it achieved dream status.


Behind Boeing's 787 delays
Problems at one of the smallest suppliers in Dreamliner program causing ripple effect

By David Greising and Julie Johnsson | Tribune staff reporters
December 8, 2007

When Boeing Co. announced a costly, six-month delay in the first delivery of the world's fastest-selling airplane, the 787 Dreamliner, it singled out a shortage of bolts and screws as the chief cause of trouble.

But the Tribune has learned that the problems go deeper and are more difficult to solve. Boeing's 787 meltdown also stems from trouble with the daring global manufacturing network it put in place to make the plane, flying in sections of the plane from companies in Japan, Italy, South Carolina and Kansas and "snapping" them together in only three days' time, an audacious idea that promised to revolutionize the way airplanes are built.

Yet the impact of a little-known Texas company that fell months behind building tools needed to assemble the plane highlights how a hiccup can play havoc with Boeing's tight 787 timetable.

The company, Advanced Integration Technology, has fallen short supplying Vought Aircraft Industries, itself the Dreamliner's most troubled supplier. Dallas-based Vought has struggled to fabricate its fuselage sections to Boeing's standards, according to several Boeing suppliers contacted by the Tribune.

Because AIT plays a key role in connecting virtually the entire length of the 787's fuselage, the company's troubles are having a ripple effect, the suppliers say.

The delay of the 787, which has not yet flown, is costing Boeing and its suppliers billions of dollars in penalty payments and cash shortages and raising questions about whether Boeing can meet its revised delivery schedule.

Three major suppliers face a total cash shortfall of $1.2 billion next year because their payments from Boeing have been delayed along with the initial 787 deliveries, according to a Tribune analysis of financial disclosures.

At least five of Boeing's largest partners say they have demanded to renegotiate their payment terms. Boeing itself expects to take a cash hit of $2.5 billion in 2008 from paying penalties to antsy airline customers and keeping its suppliers afloat.

The trouble with the bolts and screws, known as fasteners, with AIT and with previously disclosed software snafus point up the daunting challenge, and the scant margin for error, Boeing took on with the 787.

The production problems appear so complex that suppliers and analysts think it is unlikely that Boeing can meet its plan to produce 40 of the new aircraft by the end of next year and 109 total planes by the close of 2009.

Even so, the company on Tuesday is expected to reassure analysts and reporters in a worldwide conference call that it is mending the 787's broken supply chain.

"We're doing what we need to support our partners at this crucial time, but we're not going to get into specific details," a Boeing spokeswoman said in an e-mail Friday.

A critical juncture

The troubles are a jarring turn for an airplane that stirred excitement, and sales topping $100 billion, after Boeing launched the 787 Dreamliner program in 2004.

The Chicago-based aerospace giant is at a critical juncture, observers say. Boeing's airline customers have built their strategies around on-time deliveries of the new airplane.

Suppliers are facing cash-flow and logistical problems coping with endless tweaks in design and production, while for the first time bearing the cost of those changes, thanks to Boeing's new outsourcing strategy.

The cost of delays has Boeing's suppliers worried about "unk-unks," aerospace jargon for "unknown unknowns." They fret that the supply-chain problems will continue, that unexpected problems will arise during flight tests, and that Boeing's schedule will slip beyond the initial six-month delay.

Any further setbacks could unsettle confidence in Boeing's timetable and create a competitive opening for Airbus SAS, Boeing's European archrival.

Ultimately, Boeing's effort to grapple with the troubles could determine whether its broad vision for a global supply chain can work. Already bearing roughly half the 787's $10 billion development cost, suppliers might balk on Boeing's next program if delays mount and red ink flows.

"It's proven a good business model for Boeing in the short term," said David Pritchard, aviation researcher at the University of Buffalo. But, he said, "If these risk-sharing partners took a financial hit on the 787, are they going to be willing to play the risk-sharing game again?" the rest of the tale