The Boeing plant workers’ strike is over, but this is only one of the company’s problems

The union said its workers could return to work as early as Wednesday or as early as November 12. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said it could take “a couple of weeks” to resume production, in part because some workers may need to be retrained.

When the drivers return to work, management will have to solve a lot of other problems. The company needs to improve its financial position. But the company must also prioritize the quality of its work and relationships with employees and suppliers, analysts say.

Boeing managed to meet short-term profit targets and “squeezed every stakeholder, squeezed every employee, squeezed every supplier to the point of failure to maximize their short-term financial performance,” Mukunda said. “It’s bad enough if you run a clothing company. This is unacceptable when you are building the most complex, mass-produced machines humans have ever built.”

First of all, Boeing needs to produce more planes. When workers return and production resumes, the company will produce about 30 737s a month, and “they should increase that number to 50. They should do it.” And the people who are going to do this are the factory workers,” Mukunda said.

Another challenge will be getting the company’s fragile supply chain back online, said Kai von Rumohr, an aviation analyst at financial services firm TD Cowen. Suppliers that were working ahead of Boeing’s schedule when the strike began may have had to lay off workers or finance operations themselves.

“There are a lot of vexing issues in terms of the complexities involved in modernizing the supply chain,” he said.

One way Boeing could raise cash could be to sell companies that are not directly related to its business, such as flight information provider Jeppesen Sanderson, which the company bought in 2000 for $1.5 billion, von Rumohr said. .

“They will lose some profits, but they will gain a lot of money to reduce their debt,” he added. “They really need to get into a more stable position and have a solid credit rating.”

Ortberg acknowledged the challenges ahead in a message to employees after they voted to end the strike.

“There is still a lot of work ahead to return to the excellence that has made Boeing an iconic company,” he said.

The average annual salary for Boeing machinists is currently $75,608 and will eventually rise to $119,309 under the new contract, according to the company. The union said the total cost of the promised wage increases would be an increase of more than 43% over the life of the agreement.

Reaction was mixed even among union members who voted to accept the contract.

Although she voted “yes,” Seattle calibrator Yip Bolaño said the result “probably wasn’t a win.” Bolaño said she and her fellow workers made a wise but infuriating choice in accepting the offer.

“We were threatened by a company that was crippled, dying, bleeding on the ground, and we, as one of the largest unions in the country, could not even get two-thirds of our demands from them. It’s humiliating,” she said.

For others, such as William Gardiner, the laboratory’s calibration manager, the revised proposal was cause for celebration.

“I’m very pleased with this vote,” said Gardiner, who worked for Boeing for 13 years. “We haven’t fixed everything – that’s normal. Overall, this is a very positive contract.”

Along with the pay increase, the new contract gives each worker a $12,000 ratification bonus and retains the performance bonus that the company wanted to eliminate.

President Joe Biden congratulated Machinists and Boeing on reaching an agreement that he said supports fairness in the workplace and improves workers’ ability to retire with dignity. The contract, he said, is important to Boeing’s future as “a critical part of America’s aerospace sector.”

An ongoing strike would plunge Boeing into further financial danger and uncertainty. Ortberg announced plans last month lay off about 17,000 people And sale of shares to prevent a company’s credit rating from being reduced to junk status.

labor confrontation — the first strike by Boeing machinists since an eight-week strike in 2008 — was the latest setback in a volatile year for aerospace giant.

Boeing was hit by several federal investigations this year after the door stopper shot down 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. Federal regulators have set limits on Boeing’s plane production that they say will remain in place until they feel confident in their ability to do so. production safety in the company.

The door jam incident has renewed concerns about the safety of the 737 Max. Two planes crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. The then-CEO, whose efforts to turn around the company had failed, announced in March that he will resign. In July, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud to defraud regulators who approved the 737 Max.

— David Koenig, Lindsey Wasson, Hannah Schoenbaum and Kathy Bussewitz, The Associated Press