Boeing flies away from North Carolina
Published December 21, 2013
by Richard M. Barron, Greensboro News-Record, December 20, 2013.
The Piedmont Triad was bumped Friday from a flight on the Boeing 777X.
Boeing has sifted through bids from 22 states and 54 sites, including Piedmont Triad International Airport, to make a short list of places it might build a proposed $10 billion plant for the new jet.
The plant likely will employ 8,500 people.
And the company told Gov. Pat McCrory on Friday that North Carolina’s three sites, which also included Charlotte-Douglas International Airport and Kinston’s Global TransPark, are off the list.
McCrory, who has not said what kind of incentives package the state had offered Boeing, said late Friday in a statement: “We know we won’t land every project, but we make recruitment proposals that fit the state’s needs and bring a good return on investment.”
He said the 450 jobs promised by Wal-Mart in Alamance County, 473 jobs from Sturm, Ruger & Co. in Mayodan, and 800 jobs promised Friday by Electrolux in Charlotte show the state is still a top corporate destination.
Whatever incentives package McCrory was prepared to offer, it’s clear the ante is high: Missouri has a $1.7 billion package on the table and Washington state, in an all-out attempt to retain its homegrown industry, laid out an $8.7 billion package.
What’s unclear is Boeing’s next move. The company told the News & Record in a statement Friday: “Boeing has started notifying locations of their status in the 777X site selection process. We are not identifying any of those locations,” company spokesman Doug Alder wrote.
He said the company expects to make a final decision early next year.
Henry Isaacson, chairman of the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority, said: “Naturally, we’re disappointed that we didn’t go forward. But I believe we stand taller as a community having been in competition, and we now know that we can put together a great offering when the next company comes along to look at our property as a location for their business.”
Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan said: “I still think we were fortunate to even be on the list, and it shows how important an economic engine our airport is.”
The state Department of Transportation is building a bridge over the proposed Interstate 73 so the airport can build a taxiway from its western runway to about 600 acres it owns.
Airport and city officials had offered the land — and the airport’s runways, roads and infrastructure — as the perfect environment for the big operation.
Vaughan said those assets will continue to draw attention from aviation companies.
Isaacson said he and the team that assembled the complex proposal for Boeing learned a lot about the region’s ability to compete for the biggest projects.
“No matter how large the project is, PTI did not have to shy away from it because of its size,” he said. “We have the land. We have the roads. We have the infrastructure, including the utilities. We have the workforce.”
Isaacson said those who prepared the pitch figured out a problem they didn’t know they had: Boeing required bidders to include plans for rail service, something that airport officials had not considered before.
Dan Lynch, president of the Greensboro Economic Development Alliance, who led the application process, could not be reached Friday for comment.
The list of states competing for Boeing includes Alabama, California, Texas and Utah. Boeing has not made clear which sites are still in the running.
In any case, Boeing has been in a complicated spot for months.
Despite the fact that the company was founded in Seattle in 1916, it had a reason to look elsewhere for a manufacturing site.
The company recently reached an impasse with its machinists union when it proposed cuts in raises and pensions in exchange for job security.
When the union rejected the offer, Boeing began searching outside Washington for a place to build the 777X, considered the workhorse of international fleets.
Boeing also offered one final contract proposal. The union’s leadership refused to put it to a vote.
So Boeing said it would move on.
“The one thing that Boeing has been adamant about is that there are no plans to renegotiate with the union,” Guy Norris, a senior editor at Aviation Week and Space Technology, said recently.
“At some stage, whether they like it or not, there will be an impasse that both sides will have to deal with.”
December 21, 2013 at 10:56 am
Norm Kelly says:
Challenge 1: Washington state & it's municipalities are willing to lay out over $8BILLION to get a new plant. How on earth does anyone compete with something as stupid as this? If it requires an incentives package this large, doesn't it tell you that the business environment in Washington isn't all that friendly? Either their property taxes are too high, their income taxes are too high, their sales taxes are too high, or it's a combination of all the above. Wouldn't it be better for the entire state of Washington, and all the citizens and businesses in Washington, if everyone's taxes were lowered, everyone played on the same level playing field, and then companies and people would move there because it was a desirable place to live & raise a family and run a business? Perhaps if NC wants to land more businesses moving to our state, we should take a hard look at state spending, a hard look at taxes, and a very hard look at how our tax, business, regulatory environments all compare to states around us. If we are competitive with our neighbors, perhaps we wouldn't have to take money out of some people's pockets in order to put it into other people's pockets. There can be no question that offering an incentives package to a business simply means that someone else has to make up the difference for what the new company would have paid in taxes at every level.
Second point. Did the union in Washington state, where Boeing is currently located, really decide that they would rather have more money immediately, less job security in the future, and loss of another manufacturing plant with new union workers? The union bosses decided that they would rather force Boeing to build a plant somewhere else rather than provide more jobs, with better job security, to their current members? How stupid is it for the union to tell their current slave force that they are so unimportant that they'd rather have the slaves lose their jobs than to make any concession? When you have no control, someone else decides your future for you, the advancements you can make, the income level you can earn, and so many other related areas of your life, what else would you call it besides being a slave? And that's what the machinists union did in Washington. They told their members that they were slaves, who's lives could be bargained with in such a manner as to show that they are completely meaningless. I belonged to the machinists union in my youth. When I landed a job free of union interference, they offered a withdrawal to me. If I paid some fee, they would give me a card that allowed me reinstatement to the union without additional fee. Of course, I told the union rep that I would NEVER be stupid enough to join their union again. I am an adult. I can negotiate my compensation for myself. I can deal with management on my own. And, for the most part, this has worked very well for me without the drag of a union steward on my butt. There was nothing then, and certainly nothing in the news about the machinists union since then that has shown me they care the slightest bit about their membership. Making a deal with Boeing would have been good for the employees/slaves, it would have been good for the union - more members means more parties for the bosses, and it would have been good for the entire economy around Washington. But the union bosses were short-sighted, self-centered, ignorant bass-poop and told Boeing to shove it. It's not Boeing that ends up with the loss, though. It's the employees/slaves of the machinists union that end up with the loss. It's the general economy in Washington that ends up with a loss. And if the state of Washington actually does end up paying Boeing over $8BILLION to keep them/get a new plant, every resident of Washington will be losers. All this loss simply because the union bosses are s-t-u-p i -d. And short-sighted. And selfish. Though if they understood selfishness, they would have made a deal with Boeing. So this adjective may not apply. Let's go back to my first conclusion then, because the 's' word is much more accurate.
