Raytheon Co.’s announcement Thursday that it may sell Wichita’s Raytheon Aircraft Co. is big news, given the uncertainty it creates for 6,000 employees and their families. But it’s no secret that Raytheon sought to sell the plant several years ago. And analysts considered it likely that the “for sale” sign would go out again when the company’s financial picture improved, which it now has.
The success that Boeing Wichita’s former commercial division has seen since being sold off and reinvented as Spirit AeroSystems also will take the edge off the anxiety for some in the community. Spirit has demonstrated the advantages of a declaration of independence from an aerospace giant.
Still, the possible sale of a large community employer can’t help but stoke familiar fears about job cuts, labor contracts and the local economy. Sad to say, but Wichita probably ought to be used to this by now.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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74 Comments
I must be OLD.I worked there when Olive Beech still walked through the plant.
This the dump thing I ever heard build a dump build so wichita can feel it needs more problems they all really had So please give the taxes payer back there money so they can do want they want and the city can feel really all the other trach art they got around town than you for your E
This the dump thing I ever heard build a dump build so wichita can feel it needs more problems they all really had So please give the taxes payer back there money so they can do want they want and the city can feel really all the other trash art they got around town So please give the tax payer their money and live with it o.k thank you for your E
To quote Mencia (concernin Elizabeth):DEE-DE-DEE!!!!
This the dump thing I ever heard build a dump build so wichita can feel it needs more problems they all really had So please give the taxes payer back there money so they can do want they want and the city can feel really all the other trash art they got around town So please give the tax payer their money and live with it o.k thank you for your Time E
One mo’ time, E.
considering Raytheon has driven that plant into the ground, I’d say this is probably a good thing.
That way they can focus on profiting from their defense contracts for the never ending war.Kinda’ like Textron does.
We need to be diversifying our economy. That is why we need a broad-based post-secondary education system rather than the narrow tech school (training only for “approved” vocations) they plan to build at Jabara.
Why did they eviscerate Vo-Tech? Why is there no Sedgwick County Community College?
Liz? You need a aspirin or something?
Tracy you musta worked there back when my folks did. You know, when it was a decent place to work?
Todd is correct. Raytheon has run what was a proud company and brand name into the ground. It started the day after they bought the place and went into high gear the day THE DAY after old lady Beech died. They even wanted to paint over the “Beechcraft” name on the roof but the FAA wouldn’t let them! The large display inside of plant 1 that had the logos and names of all the companies and people who Beech had sold aircraft to? Cut up for scrap and rusting away out behind the shear house. Raytheons way of saying “We love our customers” I guess.
Best thing that could happen for what is left of Beechcraft would be Raytheon getting out of it.
Another grateful Wichita company–Pizza Hut, Boeing–thanks the community for its years of tax abatements and subsidies by selling out to the highest bidder.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me thrice, I am a dumb ASS.
I don’t blame them for selling out to the highest bidder. It is a for profit business. Doesn’t sound like they will be missed.JR, I worked in the tooling department for a couple of years around 1980.
Ben — You make a lot of good points in such a short post. Since I moved here about 9 or 10 years ago, I have wondered why Wichita doesn’t have a Community College somewhere in the center of town to serve less affluent graduates of North, West, East and South High School plus the three Metro High Schools plus other specialized high schools in the malls.
I recall that I started my college education in a small town “junior college” in order to complete basic courses in a smaller setting before going to engineering school in a much larger university.
About an hour ago, at a Dillons, I ran into two sisters, one of whom graduated in May as validictorian from one of the above named high schools. She said she will be going to Butler County Community College this fall in a nursing program. Her equally intelligent and responsible sister will follow next year. They said they live with their family in the central part of Wichita.
These are two perfect candidates for a community college located somewhere in the downtown part of Wichita perhaps in the present downtown library building — in the event the central library moves to nearby River Walk.
As a rough estimate, I would guess the high schools I mention in my first paragraph above graduate about 2,000 students per year. These students would furnish a good base for a Wichita Community College located in downtown Wichita.
Of course, we had the vo-tech school downtown on north Emporia. Apparently nobody wanted to finance it so now the taxpayers will spend millions of dollars in higher taxes to build a technical school for Wichita’s airplane construction industry that wasn’t requested by any company and should be handled in-house by each of the airplane companies. Each one is large enough to do their own job specific training. And if any go out of business, Wichita taxpayers are not stuck with the expense.
Just another wrong-headed project to be charged to the taxpayers by our Sedgwick County Commissioners.
I can answer that, JWink.
Sedgwick County can’t have a community college because it already has a university, WSU. Same with Douglas County, KU and and Riley Co., KSU.
That’s the way it was set up by the Regents years ago, and why Johnson JuCo packs ‘em in from neighboring KU.
It’s really not that far from Wichita to Butler County Comm. College. I was able to take all my classes at the Andover campus, then transferred to WSU to complete my business major.
Not only do we have WSU, but we also have Friends and Newman, although I know those two are private.
Butler has satellite schools in this city, as do Cowley and Southwestern. Then there are the online schools. Seems to me that if you want to stay close and have a “higher” education (even without attending a private school), the opportunities are there.
Now if the cost would just stop rising…
The Wichita economy is based on the availability of a workforce that is educated enough to be useful but not enough to abandon the blue collar economy and manufacturing jobs that still exist in the area. If the less affluent high school grads were given access to convenient, low cost education, the various aircraft manufacturers and associated suppliers would not be guaranteed a continual supply of workers that have no alternative but to deal with the terrible working conditions and constant layoffs that exist at many of Wichita’s largest employers.
Another problem with Wichita is that as you obtain more education, the number of suitable jobs available shrinks dramatically. Employers like Pizza Hut and Thorn used to employ large numbers of college grads in white collar occupations, but they have left and those jobs have never been replaced. A college education in a blue collar city like Wichita can sometimes be a waste of time and money.
My proposal back in 1994 was to bring together the 4 area CC’s, VoTech, and WSU into a rational system. There is no reason a kid should have to buy a car so he can drive to Butler County when he can take a bus to WSU or VoTech. How about CC-type tuition for CC-type courses at WSU? The host country should get SOMETHING for having the U here.
People laughed when Honda began making cars… NOW they are going to make airplanes and the smart people are taking notice!
“Why did they eviscerate Vo-Tech? Why is there no Sedgwick County Community College?”
Posted by: Ben Huie | July 27, 2006 at 02:06 PM
WHY DO WE NEED A COMMUNITY COLLEGE WHEN WE GOT HILLSIDE HIGH?
RA – the structure of a 4-year University is not amenable to providing a basic 2-year post-secondary education. There is a role for the CC/VoTech system in our community.
“How about CC-type tuition for CC-type courses at WSU?”
I thought at one time, WSU did charge less tuition for their Freshman/Sophomore classes. They did that in response to all the business of that group they were losing to Butler.
DD – I don’t think so. But, I may be wrong on that.
We do have a community college. It’s called Wichita Area Technical College. It’s basically a Vo-tec.
Although it had more programs in the past then it does now, but it’s still a great place to learn and develop skills.
For those who are not familiar with WATC.
http://www.watc.edu/
Most of it’s facilities are located at East High! Where many of the urban poor go to school.
Any questions?
I heard about the Raytheon aircraft sale yesterday, before the Eagle reported it.
Here is what is happening, folks. It was vital that high-tech aerospace companies like General Dynamics and Raytheon taught Wichitans how to build safe modern general aviation planes. But they don’t want their high-profit-margin defense contracts to be tied to low-profit-margin civil aviation, i.e. congressmen saying, “Okay, we’ll approve your defense contract proposals, if you give our people jobs in low-profit civil aviation.”
Soon we’ll be hearing about all the overpaid Raytheon workers getting their comeuppance. This community is so fragmented by the envious moronic citizens, it’s bound to start.
steve, you couldn’t be more right. For a change.
If they want to do sub work for Boeing, I mean Spirit, they’re going to have to take some cuts!
heartlander you are just full of shit.
heartlander
Raytheon knew nothing of building airplanes, how is it that they “taught Wichitans how to build safe modern general aviation planes”?
It was my experience that Raytheon was just sucking money out of the place, so I don’t know where heartlander would get the idea that Wichita needed to be taught anything about building airplanes. That’s a ridiculous statement.
I just heard last night from sources within Cessna, that they are seriously thinking about buying Raytheon. This is for several reasons.
1. They want to dominate their market share, so adding Hawker to the line will do that.
2. They need and badly want the fiber composite technology that Raytheon Aircraft has been doing. Especially for their Primier jet.
3. Eclipes Aviation just got their FAA production cert. This scares Cessna big time. They need anything and everything to combat this threat. Raytheon might just help them.
I guess people forget that Cessna and Beechcraft were hemorrhaging from product liability lawsuits until outside aerospace-expert companies took over and stopped the bleeding. The outsiders were not intrinsically interested in general aviation. For example buying the little aircraft companies and fixing them diverted capital from their high-tech R&D projects. They were essentially called in to do Kansas a favor, with assurance that in return they would get Kansas’ congressional delegation’s strong support for their military contracts. General Dynamics figured out how to fix Cessna and then said, “Okay, job done, now we’ve arranged for somebody else to take the ball.” Raytheon has been trying to follow suit and pass off Beech to somebody else for several years.
It would be great if the outsiders bought Wichita’s companies because their execs thought that building small planes would be an exhilarating long-term enterprise, but that was not their motivation. They were basically counting beens.
Vern Raburn LOVES the prospect of making small planes. Burt Rutan loves it. Wichita’s aviation pioneers had this passion. Bill Lear did too. But the passionate dreamers, and their dreams are gone from this city. They’ve been gone for some time.
heartlander
Go grow a brain. GD did nothing for Cessna except nearly run it down the drain. Cessna did not develop a single new aircraft when GD owned them.
The chinstrap on your tin foil helmet is choking off the blood flow to your brain. Take it off NOW!!
“I guess people forget that Cessna and Beechcraft were hemorrhaging from product liability lawsuits until outside aerospace-expert companies took over and stopped the bleeding.”
So wrong-headed I don’t even know where to begin. Did those outside aerospace “experts” get the liability laws changed? Neither GD nor Raytheon spent much money on capital investments at Cessna or Beech.
Unbelievable.
Cessna and Raytheon is going have to do something very different in the future. Eclipes Aviation is going to kill them.
Cessna, Raytheon and even Lear still manufacture planes as they did back in the WWII days. They can’t be like that anymore, especially for the future. They also need to kick their unions out.
But I doubt they will change, especially since the unions are really strong here. They’ll just keep on outsourcing everything till there isn’t many people working at Cessna.
Why do you think the Cessna Mustang is going to Independence? No Union. When the Union tried to unionize the Independence Plant, Cessna said, “Fine! But we won’t send you any more work.” That stopped the union in their tracks.
Unions are bad for business and economic growth in our area.
Heckler, you’re forgetting little things like avionics. Do ya think that GD and Raytheon had a little world-leading expertise here that Cessna and Beech lacked? How about structural mechanics failure expertise? Do ya think that a company that built Mach 2 jets had some expertise here that Cessna didn’t?
You can say that Cessna under new ownership didn’t change the models, but that’s irrelevant. Chevy still makes the Impala. The Honda Civic has been around for 30 years. Same model names do not equal same cars. The problem wasn’t to make planes that were generally reliable, Wichita’s manufacturers could do that. It was to marginally increase their reliability to the point where 99.9999% of crashes would be attributable to pilot error and planes, and their makers, would be held blameless.
Of course getting aircraft liability laws changed helped, but that didn’t occur until 1994. And it required the lobbying expertise of people who were Masters of the Beltway Universe.
But if you want to believe that GD and Raytheon’s CEO’s and directors thought, “Wow, there’s an opportunity to build little airplanes for hobby flyers and small businesses, and it’s highly profitable, and yes, it is true, they have a little product-defects lawsuits issue, but we’d love to tackle this,” you’ve been deceived.
Also, Cessna and Beechcraft’s production volumes in the 70’s and 80’s were way down from the 50’s and 60’s. These were not sterling acquisition opportunities when they were purchased.
Another thing. Are you at all concerned that Textron decided to make Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Cessna’s academic training/research partner? What happened to WSU and the National Insitute for Aviation Research? It’s little things like this that should be noticed, because they have longterm ramifications.
“Heckler, you’re forgetting little things like avionics. Do ya think that GD and Raytheon had a little world-leading expertise here that Cessna and Beech lacked? How about structural mechanics failure expertise? Do ya think that a company that built Mach 2 jets had some expertise here that Cessna didn’t? ”
You clearly are speaking from a position of ignorance. Beech never did build avionics, they bought them. Raytheon’s expertise in avionics made no difference at all. When Beech/Raytheon wanted to start building jets, they didn’t design one. They bought the design and tooling from Mitsubishi. They changed virtually nothing in the Mitsubishi design.
As far as GD/Cessna, all of their planes were designed by CESSNA ENGINEERS, not anybody from Georgia. Any engineering group in Wichita could have designed any of the planes that were produced. And certainly, Textron has virtually no input into how an airplane is designed or built.
You have a very uninformed opinion about what goes in the aircraft biz.
Actually Todd is right. I used to work for Cessna. Of course not back in the GD days, but I’ve known people that have.
One friend of mine actually used to work directly with GD.
They are pump and dump company. Yes! When GD came in, they clean up some stuff, streamline a bit, and then they sold it.
They didn’t do anything new or contribute to any engineering or production. They just were interested in the quick sale, so they just streamlined the business part a bit. Just an accounting game really.
But GD had no intentions of keeping Cessna, just like the have no intention of doing anything else with all their other companies.
Todd, I hate to tell you this, but most of the executive-tier engineers aren’t Wichita natives. They’ve been recruited from other states. Why? Because WSU’s aerospace engineering program is not up to the task.
The purchase of Mitsubishi intellectual property and tools was an international transaction. That required people who had well-developed connections with Japanese corporate leaders. Globalists dealing with globalists.
Fact: Cessna and Beech were sold to distant-headquartered corporations. WHY do you think this happened? All facts can be explained by other facts. I’ve tried to give you my read. What is yours?
These companies’ sales cost Wichita profit dollars, which went far away. Wichita only retained payroll dollars. People who became decisionmakers controlling these companies, and their people’s fates didn’t live here. They looked at workers–human beings–as ledger statistics. Olive Beech loved her Wichita workers. I’m not criticizing Bill Swanson, but do you think he does? Nobody in his position living 1500 miles from here could do this.
Do you think the aircraft companies sale to outsiders was a positive development for the community at the time, overall, when all factors are taken in balance? If you judge “yes”, explain your judgment. If you judge “no”, explain your judgment.
Another thought. If Raytheon wants to sell, how about Raytheon workers buying it, and reconverting Beech to a locally-owned company? Wouldn’t that be a shot in the arm for this community?
“Todd, I hate to tell you this, but most of the executive-tier engineers aren’t Wichita natives. They’ve been recruited from other states. Why? Because WSU’s aerospace engineering program is not up to the task.”
Now you are truly talking out of your butt. WSU’s AE department is one of the premiere programs in the entire world. Of course these companies have to recruit from other areas of the country, because there is no way WSU alone can satisfy the demand for every company in Wichita. It is incredible that you would expect them to. For one thing, the program is tough. Very tough. You can’t get enough people to complete it, because many, many people aren’t equipped to meet the requirements. In any case, it makes no difference where the engineers come from. The point is, neither GD nor Raytheon brought anything new to the table with regard to how airplanes are built in Wichita. If you take a walk down the assembly line at Beech/Raytheon, it is the same assembly line using the same processes that were in use 50 years ago.
“The purchase of Mitsubishi intellectual property and tools was an international transaction. That required people who had well-developed connections with Japanese corporate leaders. Globalists dealing with globalists. ”
Okay, so Raytheon brokered the deal. So what? That doesn’t change the fact that they didn’t have anything at all to do with the engineering or production of the actual product.
“Do you think the aircraft companies sale to outsiders was a positive development for the community at the time, overall, when all factors are taken in balance? If you judge “yes”, explain your judgment. If you judge “no”, explain your judgment.”
AT THE TIME, it was a good thing. The influx of outside money kept 2 companies afloat that might otherwise have not made it. At the time, the industry was in a deep down-cycle, for many reasons.
That is not the point of the argument. You stated that Raytheon and GD “showed Wichita how to build airplanes”. You seriously need to wake up if you think that. Now quit with the straw man arguments and answer the point.
I think it was good for Wichita too at the time. But devising stopgap measures is tactical. Wichita doesn’t get the distinction between this and far-horizon strategic measures.
My point is, the aerospace companies were called upon to prop up Kansas’s socialist-welfare state. Take away the “you figure out how to protect civil aviation jobs and we’ll approve your military contracts,” scheme, take away federal commodity grains subsidies, and Kansas, outside the KC MSA, reverts to buffalo-grazing land. Settling Kansas will very likely prove to be a long-term-unsustainable experiment. Farmers produce goods that are less than their open-market value. Underground water is going to give out in western Kansas, unless global warming brings copious rain. In another decade, Asia will be able to make civil aircraft, cheaper than here. So what functional purposes will Kansas serve?
I don’t know where you get the idea that WSU’s AE department is one of the premier in the world. Read US News and World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” and “Best Graduate Schools”, AE program rankings. Then pay a few bucks and get the extended online versions. WSU is not on them. USNWR writers don’t dream up the rankings, they ask school of engineering deans and sub-discipline chairmen to submit evaluation score numbers of peer institutions, and then USNWR tabulates these experts’ evaluations.
According to the National Science Foundation’s evaluation of federal research funding, WSU ranks closely with Long Beach State University in AE. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/profiles/data/ip002565.cfm
LBSU’s AE department is ranked 6th in the single state of California, after Caltech, Stanford, UCLA, and USC, and Cal Poly.
WSU doesn’t have ONE National Academy of Engineering, Aerospace Section member. http://www.nae.edu/nae/naepub.nsf/Home+Page?OpenView
All the premier AE programs, except for the University of Texas-Austin, i.e. Caltech, Stanford, MIT, MIT, Georgia Tech, U Michigan, U Washington, and Northwestern (which is now getting millions of dollars from relocated Boeing) received Guggenheim grants 8 decades ago to build world-class aeronautical research and education facilities. The University of Wichita didn’t get one.
How many transsonic planes has Wichita built? They’ve been around for a half century. What kind of research does WSU’s National Insitute for Aviation Research perform in propulsion, fuel efficiency, air-traffic control and avionics? What full-size-aircraft wind tunnel does WSU have, and what airspeeds does it generate?
[URL]http://www.jesse-mccartney.intrel.org/URL
WSU has three wind tunnels and a supersonic speed one.
You let the “workers”, especially the union workers buy Raytheon, and you will see an empty factory within a year. That is the worse idea I have ever heard.
Joe?
I happen to have personally worked at the place we are discussing. So I’m gonna figure I know just a little more about the matter than you. And I’m gonna call your last post…..uniformed (I was gonna say asinine. But I’m trying to be nicer lately!) There is a highly skilled but very poorly treated workforce at Raytheon. They are EMINENTLY more qualified to run the place then the suits, former Quick Trip managers, and bean counters currently in charge. See? Raytheon no longer promotes from within. So what you have out there is folks in charge who don’t know what to do but tell other people what to do. The culture is “how can we piss ya off bad enough to make ya quit before we find a reason to fire ya?” The WORKERS and I capitalize that word while you belittle it with “” they have a great deal at stake in that place. They can’t run off and count beans or explore how dark it is under a desk somewhere else. They also would be interested in the long term survival of the place as opposed to how it is gonna look on this quarters bottom line in a report on a desk a thousand miles away. Those WORKERS you happily bash might actually save the place. At least THEY have a reason to try. But I can tell ya it is gonna have to be them or somebody else and soon. I’ve seen what is going on there. I’ll not say more than to advise you to choose carefully the planes you fly in.
Too many workers are afraid of owning a company the size of Raytheon Aircraft or Boeing. We tried to get it going at boeing but people couldn’t understand that their personal risk would be limited.
I’m sorry JR. The people on the floor don’t have clue one about running a large company.
Bean counters and former Quick Trip managers? How about drunks, drug addicts, nepotisim out the wazzo, low skilled/no skilled workers who only look forward to their next drink of whiskey.
I’m sorry! You can’t run a company being a simple push button laid off machinst. Most of these people can’t even manage their own finances with trying to pay a boat, truck, jet skies, trailer home, max-out credit cards, rent-to-own furniture and big screen tv and their velvet Elvis paintings along with paying child support off of two divorces with a $30K a year salary. Yet it’s managements fault. :rolleyes:
Joe,
I must say that your contempt for the American worker is disturbing.
V.L.R.B!!
“Another thought. If Raytheon wants to sell, how about Raytheon workers buying it, and reconverting Beech to a locally-owned company? Wouldn’t that be a shot in the arm for this community?”
Posted by: heartlander | July 28, 2006 at 11:22 AM
MAYBE THE CITY OF WICHITA WILL BUY IT TO KEEP IT IN TOWN:)
Yeah Ian,
Joe your hatred for working people and the unions that represent them is obviously VERY deeply held. I wonder what the source of that is? I could speculate. But why don’t you spare me and yourself that and share?
Ya see Joe, the folks you trash in that little rant of yours above? They build airplanes. What do you build Joe?
See Joe? I was trying to enlighten you. But since ya took a shot I owe ya one back.
YOU don’t make anything do ya Joe?
“The people on the floor don’t have clue one about running a large company.” How do you know that Joe? And is that your PRIMARY consideration when you get aboard an aircraft? How the company is run? I’ve seen some of those “drunks, drug addicts, nepotisim out the wazzo, low skilled/no skilled workers who only look forward to their next drink of whiskey” folks you attack refuse to ok a part or assembly or procedure they saw as unsafe, or illegal. And that on pain of losing their job because some bean counter wanted faster! sooner! get it done!
Would the employees of Raytheon even WANT to take over? I cannot say. Are they qualified to do it. Yes. Because their goal is making safe aircraft, not money.
What is your goal in attacking them and me Joe? Just where and why did you start to hate working people? I need to understand that before I engage you further in a debate I quite frankly feel you bring little too.
JR! There is your flaw in your entire aurgument.
“Want to make safe planes, not money.”
DING DING DING DING!
In business it’s all about making money. This isn’t a socialist endevour, nor are you the Soviet Union making military equipment for the sake of the army. You are in BUSINESS to make MONEY!
Dude! I’ve worked in aircraft. Right in the thick of the union hogwash factory floor. I KNOW UNION WORKERS, because I worked with them. And I can tell you straight up, I’ve never met a bunch of lazy, drug addict, drunks, in my entire life. It’s not all of them mind you, but there are plenty of them.
Dude! You have no idea what my job entails and it is one that cannot be outsourced. What are you doing? I thought you were laid off? Your skills aren’t needed. Robots are doing your job. I’m the guy that maintains those robots.
Joe?
The bell is for you. But good on you for ringing it before your post! Saved me the trouble!
Shouldn’t aircraft workers be concerned about making safe airplanes as opposed to money?
Son you just trashed your own arguement! You bash AGAIN on workers! AND you dismiss safety?
Kid you aint working on robots. You ARE a robot.
Robots do not concern themselves with safety or much of anything beyond their programming. Sorta like you Joe?
Keep dreaming man!
I pray for the poor pilot that has to fly the plane that you used to build.
Dude! Unless you are a drunk or a drug addict, you can’t tell me that you worked in a unionized Aircraft factory, known as Raytheon and everybody was hard working and hunky dory. You know that isn’t the case, so quite defending them.
Most people didn’t care about building safe planes. They could have cared less. They didn’t have pride in their work. It was just a job that some relative got them.
I’m not saying all, but there are a LOT of them. And you can tell who they are by how strong their union loyalty was. The stronger the union loyalty, the more they sucked.
Makes me wonder why you were laid off. Did you fail numorous drug tests?
I’ll not trash you here Joe. You do a good enough job of that yourself!
“Most people didn’t care about builiding safe airplanes”
Hey clown I just posted otherwise. YOU trash the people who build those airplanes. You freely ADMIT that your concern is profit not safety. You service robots. Do robots concern themselves with safety or a quality product? Or do they just follow programming.
If you wish to take it more personal you will have to do it by email Joe. YOU know, with a person not a robot. I’ve melted you down before. I choose not to do it in a forum where you are clearly at a disadvantage.
Joe, Joe…
You have to find a better line than all union people and all people who disagree with you are either alcoholic or drug addicts.
You have no basis to make those acusations.
I could say because I disagree with some of what you say, that your are a child molestor.
See how stupid that sounds? I am sure they must have taught you something about arguments at WSU.
Take care. See you soon.
Joe is a strange bird DD.
He decries the religious right for their self righteuosness (good on him) but he himself is self righteous!
I didn’t not say that profits come before saftey. You just don’t really can’t grasp a simple concept, can you?
I said business is all about profit. I said nothing about profits above safe airplanes. You HAVE to have a safe airplane. It’s government inspected. Since you been out of the loop in aircraft, you should know that every assembly in an aircraft must be stamped out by an inspector and that is validated by the FAA.
You haven’t answered my question about why you were kicked out of Raytheon. You sure couldn’t run a business. So there had to be something. The way you are so defensive, especially with drug addicts and drunks, I suspect you had that problem.
DD! Never said ALL, I said a lot! Big difference.
Well Joe yes you did say that profits come before safety. Paraphrasing here “It’s all about money!”
Defensive Joe? Yup I am. About the workers who make the product. Just what are you defensive about? What is the foundation of your hatred of working people? Is it love of robots? That your only love?
Do not ask me personal questions while you evade them yourself! Why is it you hate unions and working people? Did they hate you? Why was that? I could speculate but won’t. Sorta makes me better than you. But I don’t do that. You do.
“Dude! Unless you are a drunk or a drug addict, you can’t tell me that you worked in a unionized Aircraft factory, known as Raytheon and everybody was hard working and hunky dory. You know that isn’t the case, so quite defending them.”
Hey Joe ya wanna see a pay stub?
I think you are calling me a liar. Back that up. I can FOREVER back up calling you ……….misinformed. I was gonna say “a moron” but I’m trying to be nice. What Joe I post too intelligently to have been a “dumb button pushing machinist”? Maybe it is you who is dumb. And self righteous.
I dislike unions because it’s an Unamerican, anti-individual organization that doesn’t care about the people they represent, they care more about getting their “cut.”They don’t do anything to help create jobs or help the companies they exploitate.
Yeah! I would like to see a pay stub. You don’t work at Raytheon anymore. I thought you were unemployed. You haven’t denied it. You haven’t denied you got fired from Raytheon for failing drugs test. And you haven’t denied that the people you used to work with were mostly drunks and drug addicts, because you know that to be true.
I’m a great employee, I work extremely hard, I don’t complain, I’m never demanding, I just don’t have a union sticker on my roll-away or bumber stickers on my car or where a union jacket or tee-shirt. Their loyalty to the Union is misguided. It is the company that gave you the job, not the union.
The personal crap is uncalled for.
Secondly, the union at Spirit has been a far cry from a liability to their ability to make money.
Would management prefer that there weren’t a union? Sure. They’d also like to be able to fire any employee for any reason, not pay overtime, and pay no holidays. That doesn’t mean those are good ideas.
Unions are “un-american”?
Wake up, unions are what made the US the industrial power it has become.
Joe? You are making rather an ass of yourself. It is not the first time.
Now I can help you along with this……..
“UnionsI dislike unions because it’s an Unamerican,”
CAPITAL U Joe? Is that for emphasis that unions are REALLY “un-American”? Does that square with how it is unions who work and try to keep jobs in THIS country while the good wonderful nice (using words from Joe Williams land) corporations outsource those jobs to the lowest bidder?Oh but hey you were just getting started!
“anti-individual” Um Joe? In Kansas the decision to join a union is the choice of each individual. Those who have no union are free to do whatever it takes to please their employer. The secret of YOUR success?
“that doesn’t care about the people they represent”
A union is only as strong and effective as its membership Joe. I hate being presumptuous. But I am going to assume you were as actively anti-union and pro “da boss” in your past as you are here. SO you probably created whatever problems you have personally had with unions YOURSELF. I know I never enjoyed going to bat (I was a union steward) for folks who had one hand in mine and the other on a knife in my back!
And then you go to personal shots against me and other people you don’t know. I’m going to be nice………for now. I’ll only trash you a little. I’ll invite you again to take personal issues to email. Or I can make a blithering fool of you right here for everyone to see.
That last paragraph of yours? Shit Joe you aint much more than those robots you say ya service. I’m glad you enjoy their company! I’m guessin ya aint got many human friends. Not any you share trust or “equal footing” with anyway. But hey if the occasional pat on the head, and “good boy” floats your boat who am I to judge? I don’t know about looking for those things.
You were a Union Steward? That just explains the whole thing.
But you’re a two pack a day smoker too.
I have nothing more to say about you and the Union matter. It’s not secret that I think collective bargaining is bad for America. You can disagree with me, but many people agree with me. That is why Unions are on the way out in America and hardly nobody cares about the Union cause or feels sympathy for you guys anymore.
We like being reconized for our hard work and our skill level. That is the “modern” work society. Get used to it or live off the government teet. I don’t care.
Ya know Joe, you are pretty free with the judging of folks. Not unlike SOME of the Christian faith whose self righteousness troubles you.
This makes you a hypocrite Joe.
There are other words I could apply to you. None of them are very flattering! And no doubt you’ve heard them before….and probably often!
A Go along getalong attitude is not in the long term interest of working folk or democracy for that matter. You’re harmless to anyone who doesn’t work around ya Joe. Do the rest of us a favor and stay outta politics! Follow the leader is a game for children.