Boeing Mismanagement Causes 25% Workforce Reduction in Wichita

This is infuriating and one of many reasons why the Peace Economy Project continually calls for the diversification of Boeing facilities.

There are many guilty parties in the debacle that has been the procurement process for the refueling tanker bid and Boeing’s management was at the vanguard of these missteps. To force 800 medium-level employees, more than 25% of the Wichita staff, to pay for the errors, mismanagement, and corruption coming from senior Boeing management is simply unjust.

Boeing’s lobbyists argue that we need defense contracts to provide much needed jobs across the country. They insinuate that they are benevolent benefactors of communities so long as the DoD has money to throw their way, but when it’s clear that that money is absent regardless of the fact that its absence is due, at least in part, to high level management decisions, blue-collar-Joe is the first to go.

If Boeing were truly concerned about the communities where it finds it’s employees, Boeing would seek to find sustainable, long-term, non-defense related contracts. It’s been clear for sometime that the lines would be closing on many Boeing contracts and the tanker deal has rested on a shaky foundation since the get-go. This announcement clearly illustrates poor planning and mismanagement by the Boeing Corporation.

It is also no surprise to find that the Kansas Senator, Sam Brownback, serves on the Senate Committee on Appropriates (the Senate committee with the Defense purse strings). Eyebrows are raised further when finding that Congressman Todd Tiahart sits on the House Appropriations Committee and, within that committee, the Defense Subcommittee. He is also a former Boeing employee.

Might Wichita have been chosen as a site to grab the attention of influential committee members who would fight on the company’s behalf? I wouldn’t call it a long shot.

Wichita is also a site working on the Airborne Laser, which was recently slated to get a funding cut.

-Pep-


Boeing to lay off 800 at IDS in Wichita
11/19/08
St. Louis Business Journal

The Boeing Co. plans to cut 800 jobs, including management, at its Integrated Defense Systems facility in Wichita, Kan., next year.

Boeing said the cuts were due to the delay in the U.S. Air Force tanker-replacement program.

The layoffs will impact managers, salaried and hourly workers.
Boeing will deliver 60-day layoff notices to approximately 76 employees Friday. Their last day of work is scheduled for mid-January. The company will deliver the rest of the layoff notices throughout 2009, with most occurring in the first half of the year.

Boeing Wichita today employs 3,000 people.