Cleared for takeoff

"Peanut" was the name of a healthy and tame pet squirrel that was recently seized from its owner in a government-ordered raid and euthanized for no reason. Unless perhaps the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation mistook the rodent for Roger Stone or Steve Bannon.

Thinking of the rodent as not only a victim of law-enforcement overreach, but also as a unit of measurement, I wonder how many squirrels in peak condition, as Peanut was, add up in weight to a 775,000-pound Boeing commercial jet, which we take for granted will transport our loved ones without a care in the world, thousands of miles, at 600 mph, through electric storms and wind shears, at 35,000 feet altitude, through crowded skies in pitch darkness. 

Relying on our pilots and the sophisticated avionics that have conditioned us to take safe, uneventful journeys almost for granted, we rarely credit the machinists on whose prowess the travelers' lives depend. There's no margin of error in their line of work. Unlike most people, they can't have a day when everything goes wrong and make up for it later.

The 33,000 hugely skilled Boeing machinists of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) who make the 737 MAX jet and the 767 and 777 wide-bodies airworthy,  recently returned from a seven-week strike that had begun in late September. It was their union's first strike at Boeing in 16 years. 

The new contract, which offers a 38-percent pay increase over four years,  passed with 59 percent of the vote. The turnout was almost 80 percent. According to Anderson Economic Group, financial losses from the strike totaled $11.6 billion.

The return to production was a powerful shot in the arm for the company, which had been losing around $100 million daily and on the precipice of collapse.

The pay hike and a 4-percent bonus together total the 40-percent hike they had originally demanded. Because of the need for retraining and other reasons, it'll take time to restore production to its pre-strike levels. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su was praised for embodying President Biden's pro-collective bargaining position.

The pay increase for its machinists will add almost $1.5 billion to Boeing's tab over four years, if the $12,000 bonus for each union member is included. At the new contract's expiration, the average machinist's annual pay will be $119, 309. If you factor in the limited pool of people with their high level of specific technical expertise, and the enormous responsibility of doing a job in which the slightest error can be fatal, this sum is quite modest. 

Previously, it was $75,608. That inadequacy is cringeworthy.

The settlement was a "win-win,” in that the workers' compensation goals were mostly achieved while performing, in effect, life-saving CPR on the company on the verge of irrecoverable economic fibrillation. Its investment-grade credit rating had been in the toilet. 

There is, however, a downside. 

The defined-benefit pension plan, that Boeing replaced 10 years ago with a 401(k)-retirement plan, was not restored. That is, unfortunately, typical of the decades-long trend in both private- and public-sector jobs. It increasingly seems that they are beyond resuscitation, and that contracts are being sweetened in the short term to beguile workers into distraction and to drop their militant guard during future negotiations.

It's been reported that despite the end of the strike and anticipated economic recovery, which began immediately, Boeing still has contingency plans to cut 10 percent of its global staff of 171,000 workers.

Boeing's financial woes have been compounded by continuing flak over its recent history of entirely avoidable safety failures brought to light by whistleblowers. 

Multiple airlines had loose bolts and defective door plugs on their planes. There were cases of sudden decompression in airline cabins. Dave Calhoun, Boeing's former CEO, called the proliferation of such perilous issues, matters of "quality control" and "quality escape.”

Earlier this year, the FAA launched an investigation into Boeing's compliance with federal regulations governing the inspection and testing of new aircraft.

A few months ago, in response to Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley's questioning,  Boss Calhoun acknowledged that his annual pay exceeded 32 million dollars, and that he had in the prior year been awarded a 45-percent pay raise, even though he was ultimately accountable ("the buck stops here") for pieces of aircraft falling out of the sky, door seals being lubricated with liquid dish soap and cleaned with cheesecloth, novel uses of hotel key cards being used in airline maintenance,  inspection records of Boeing's 787 being ostensibly falsified, and ongoing criminal inquiries. The union claims that over eight years, its members only got four 1-percent wage increases.

Calhoun was not humbled one penny by the disclosures. And speaking of pennies, the Boeing 737 Max was designed for enhanced fuel efficiency. There's nothing wrong with doing so to cut costs, but not when it's consciously at the expense of safety. It was a corporate calculation for which 346 passengers on two of these planes paid with their lives within a few months of each other, a couple of years ago, when the planes plummeted to earth.

The allegedly deliberate installation and hiding of substandard parts from the FAA should, if true, land the decision-makers in prison for  long sentences as appropriate for multiple violent felonies.

It must be emphasized that all errors that occurred, whether incidental to cost-cutting decisions or the collateral damage of poor design or policy, were not the fault whatsoever of machinists or other workers. 

Although we should, as a rule, be leery of venerating icons, whether human, cultural or corporate, I have a soft spot for legacy Boeing, whose World War II "flying fortresses" dropped payloads of righteous fire and laid waste the industrial capacities and crushed the morale of perpetrators of the Holocaust and imperial sadists.

In modern times, we have come to the realization that there is no such thing as an inherently patriotic corporation and perhaps there never was. We covet our mythologies and sometimes perpetuate them to prop up nationalism and maybe a sense of the meaning of life.

The Boeing saga continues. It has over the generations both lived up to the sublimer principles of aspiration and achievement, and also enabled tragedies that can never be lived down.

Boeing workers, returning from their strike, will see to it that the company's reputation will once again be cleared for takeoff.