McNerney JW

3. Jim McNerney: Middle Class Manslaughter

The U.S. manufacturing giant Boeing, analyst Harold Meyerson <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-as-us-manufacturers-win-the-middle-class-loses/2013/12/12/5333cd5a-6363-11e3-aa81-e1dab1360323_story.html" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">observed</a> [39] last week, has only one global rival in the large-scale passenger-plane market, the European conglomerate Airbus.

Workers at these two aerospace giants turn out to make about the same compensation. But executives at Boeing make more.

Question: Given these realities, what should Boeing do to compete more effectively? The answer from Boeing CEO Jim McNerney: Cut Boeing worker wages, benefits, and pensions!

Earlier this fall, McNerney gave his Seattle area workers an ultimatum: Either accept a contract “<a href="http://ctj.org/ctjinthenews/2013/12/alternet_boeing_is_a_greedy_freeloading_corporation_that_screws_american_taxpayers_and_workers.php#.UqsdeCcQTCt" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">extension</a> [40]” that would leave them paying more for health care and getting less in retirement — and force new hires to work 10 extra years at substandard wages — or Boeing would go elsewhere to manufacture its new 777x passenger jetliner.

Boeing gave Washington State’s political leaders <a href="http://ctj.org/ctjinthenews/2013/12/alternet_boeing_is_a_greedy_freeloading_corporation_that_screws_american_taxpayers_and_workers.php#.UqsdeCcQTCt" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">a similar ultimatum</a> [40]: Either fork over new subsidies and tax breaks or see your state lose jobs by the thousands. Washington lawmakers caved almost instantly. They voted Boeing the largest subsidy deal in U.S. history, over half a billion annually for the next 16 years, <a href="http://clawback.org/2013/12/06/how-boeing-pilots-inequality/?utm_source=Clawback+to+E-list+12.09.13&utm_campaign=Clawback+to+E-list+12.09.13&utm_medium=email" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">over double</a> [41] the state’s annual funding for the University of Washington.

Boeing’s workers didn’t cave. They rejected the Boeing ultimatum, and McNerney, who <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/boeing-boosted-ceo-s-pay-20-in-year-before-787-grounding.html" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">pulled in</a> [42] $27.5 million in take-home last year after $23 million the year before, is now parsing subsidy offers from half a dozen other states.

How does this story end? Maybe with the “<a href="https://portside.org/2013-11-22/walmartization-aerospace" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Walmartization of aerospace</a> [43].”

“This,” as Seattle author Timothy Egan <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/opinion/egan-under-my-thumb.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">puts it</a> [44], “is how the middle class dies.”

4. W. James McNerney, Jr., chairman, president and CEO, the Boeing Company. McNerney launched at Procter & Gamble, reached high altitude at GE and shot to the stratosphere by becoming head honcho at Boeing in 2005.

Boeing has been a long-time beneficiary of the government’s <a href="http://http//www.live5news.com/story/18483338/export-import-bank-extension-approved-for-boeing">Export-Import Bank</a> [15], which has financed sales of many of its planes. McNerney chairs President Obama's Export Council, where he works hard to arrange policies that benefit his company. He spent much of 2011 slugging it out with the National Labor Relations Board over moving assembly plants from Washington to South Carolina, a right-to-work state. That got settled, but now the profitable company is in a fight with engineers who don’t want their pensions chopped nearly in half. Boeing’s excuse? It wants to keep the engineers “competitive.” Union members have r<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-30/boeing-risks-labor-unrest-with-engineers-contract-talks.html">eported intimidation</a> [16] from the company’s management as the dispute has intensified.

The Boeing boss is now crying “deficit” and asks for your retirement money. Pretty brassy, considering that the company paid not a single penny in taxes between 2008 and 2011. In fact, Citizens for Tax Justice calculates that Boeing <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/taxbreak/2012/02/17/obama-touts-boeing-critics-lament-company-tax-breaks/">actually got money back </a>[17]from the U.S. government over the past decade, “paying a negative 6.5 percent tax rate, even though it was profitable every year from 2002 through 2011.”