Final Analysis: Flying South with Boeing

When a two-to-one majority of the local International Association of Machinists told The Boeing Co. what it could do with its take-it-or-else contract offer last November, the public handwringing was enough to make an orthopedic surgeon work weekends. How could the machinists be so selfish? How could they sell the future of the Puget Sound economy down the river? How could all that carpal tunnel aggravation go untreated?

The reality, of course, is that Boeing will do whatever Boeing wants to do. Period.

Three years ago, when Boeing won the contract to build a new refueling tanker for the U.S. Air Force, the city of Wichita, Kansas, was over the moon. Wichitas share of the tanker business would support 7,500 jobs in the area, a Boeing spokesperson said. Turns out the estimates were exaggerated by a factor of yikes. A year after landing the tanker contact, Boeing decided to pull out of Wichita entirely, which means the 7,500 promised jobs were pretty much a pipe dream and the 2,500 jobs that already existed at Boeings Wichita plant would evaporate, too.

They werent totally honest with us, Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer said at the time. We thought the relationship was a lot stronger.

It was a relationship forged with the help of about $4 billion in municipal bonds and hundreds of millions of dollars more in tax relief.

Sound familiar?

With the kind of speed usually reserved for trying to outrun a Tim Eyman initiative petitioner, the state of Washington offered the biggest tax break ever registered by the Institute of Servility and Submissiveness. It was measured at roughly $8.7 billion and would have extended the toadying to the year 2040. But civic-minded sucking up can only get you so far. Without the machinists approval of a reworked contract that removed things like pension and health benefits they had already been granted during the last round of negotiations, Boeing said it would pack up the blueprints for its 777 next-generation jetliner and build it elsewhere.

The states largest newspaper urged the machinists to take the new deal, apparently subscribing to the theory that extortion is the new compromise. To the advice and to the offer, a majority of machinists said, No, thanks, and Boeing said it would decide in three months time exactly where it would choose to have the 777X assembled.

On its website under the heading Culture & Values, Boeing declares: We will always take the high road by practicing the highest ethical standards, and by honoring our commitments. We will take personal responsibility for our actions, and treat everyone fairly and with trust and respect.

The high road, it would seem, needs resurfacing. Hey, it happens. Infrastructure improvements get postponed during economic downturns. When things improve like when your stock price goes up by 75 percent in the span of 11 months and your profitability is as robust as ever you patch the cracks and fill the potholes. After all, as James Kouzes and Barry Posner note in The Leadership Challenge, a popular management textbook: Credibility is the foundation of leadership. Above all else, we as constituents must be able to believe in our leaders. We must believe that their word can be trusted.

When leaders break a promise or seek to renege on a signed contract, thats not credible, high-road behavior. Its off-road bullying: dirty, muddy and dangerous. To deflect attention onto workers who expected a good faith honoring of their contract is disingenuous. And to see leaders do nothing when the workers are made out to be the villains in a sad display of corporate intimidation is disheartening.

John Levesque is the managing editor of Seattle Business magazine.