Boeing laying off 4500 only the beginning. (Wichita, Washington: sales, real estate, lease)

[icestormonthemountain]

So for all those that were saying that Wichita is not going to get hit by the recession. Boing is laying off 4500 and this is just the start accorcing to CNN. Wichita, and most of the people who have lived there more than 10 years know this to be true, is affected by the economy and goes up and down. I have lived there in and out over the years and it is common to hear that you live high on the hog for 2 years and starve for 1. Those housing prices that went up 4% a year will have to by this time next year drop to keep competitive. And with banks not lending I would say it may be a lean summer and winter for the real estate sales people.

[athfo]

I don't deny that what you say about these layoffs is true upandrunning, but where is your source? Where's your link?

[athfo]

Found it for you:

Boeing's commercial division to lay off 4,500 | Wichita Business - Kansas Business | Kansas.com (http://www.kansas.com/business/story/657925.html - broken link)

From the article:

Most of the cuts will be in Washington state, where Boeing employs just over 76,400 people. The vast majority of those workers are in the Commercial Airplanes unit, so this represents more than a 5 percent work force cut.

[icestormonthemountain]

I do not look up research information for people. If you doubt something find it yourself. You looked up nothing for me, maybe you helded others who did not want to do a search, but not me. I watched the new and spend my time researching it.

[athfo]

Originally Posted by icestormonthemountain

I do not look up research information for people. If you doubt something find it yourself. You looked up nothing for me, maybe you helded others who did not want to do a search, but not me. I watched the new and spend my time researching it.

Apparently you didn't research it very well. See my above post.

[drjones96]

The Boeing unit here is small compared to what it was before Spirit bought out the commercial end. Now it's just the MM&MC (Military Maitenance & Modification Center). I don't know the stats but can't be a 'big' workforce regardless. And since Boeing lost the tanker program (they're fighting to keep it but they're probably going to lose which is a huge mistake by our government...don't get me started) they're more than likely going to disolve this business unit when the Air Force moves to the new tanker and phases out the KC-135 and move the remaining work to St.L or Washinton state. This is all speculation mind you but I did once work at the Boeing Wichita unit as an intern on the KC/RC-135 program. I thought at the time that if they didn't have the KC/RC-135 work they'd be dead on the military end. They do have the executive maintenance and mod work (Air Force 1) and the Airborne Laser but it's not like that couldn't be done somewhere else.

[whitesqual]

Well first off, this is a sign of what is to come for the whole aircraft industry. It can not and will not some how magically keep from feeling the pinch of a bad economy. Second the government is going to have to cut military purchases, and expansion. We need to cut the Military by 25 to 50%. We do not need new tankers and I hope this is one program that we get rid of. The money would be much better spent on social programs. I am so sick of a government that has never seen a weapons system that they did not want to buy on mass. People are loosing their homes and they want to build a bigger nuke. Its the old guns and butter, can\'t have both. The government needs to invest into alt. energy and take out the run for it when oil is over 100 a bbl. and a run from it like now. This way we can keep moving toward a sustainable economy and alt. fuels. We need to dump the free market and go to a Hybrid of socialism and free market. The free market will always be a boom and bust feast and famine system. You are either turning down work, or standing in a bread line, the pendulum does not stay in the middle, it never has in its history. We make this happen and do nothing because some have made it rich off the system and then hold our carrots to the masses that you can make it rich to. Well for every Tom Cruise there are a million who did not make it. Same with the market, for every T. Boon there are millions who just make their payments each month. Its sanctioned slavery. And the poorest usually neocons types have bought into it, partly because they are the same people who will stand in line at the liquor store to buy the quikpick because the pot just went to 100 million, and partly because they have been told by a fat rich preacher that god wants them to. Both are fantasies.
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For every Limbaugh there are 1/4 million who do not get to make it in radio, But people are so stupid they would rather take a chance to get rich even if the odds are better on getting struck by lightning, than to just work and make a living in a stable system. Those who think god gave man the United States, well you are so low minded it is like trying to tell a scientoligest that L Ron was a SiFi writer and crook. So good luck with that.

[whitesqual]

BTW Kansas can be so proud that it wants to put god back in schools. My question is what god? Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Zoroaster? I have argued this many times and always get [Insert southern accent here] The god of the bible, our founding fathers were Christians, and we should be Christians. [end southern acc. ] They have no idea of what history of this country is. Most of the founders of this country were Deists, Some like Thomas Paine were Atheists.
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[drjones96]

Originally Posted by whitesqual

We do not need new tankers and I hope this is one program that we get rid of. The money would be much better spent on social programs.

You must be a tanker expert to make a statement like that. Nevermind the fact that we've been using our current fleet of KC-135's since the '50's.

You want to 'get rid of' the tanker programs? Well when the KC-135's are no longer fit for service how will you carry out that mission without a replacement? Sure you have KC-10's but not nearly enough to fill the void if you no longer have the hundreds of KC-135's that are now in service. We'll see if we can refuel that fuel starved F-16 (another aging plane btw) over the Atlantic ocean with some social reform. YAY!

[hindsight2020]

He/she did state it is the age old gun/butter issue, so I'll give credit on that. You'll never convince a government contractor that any contract that keeps him employed is unnecessary, after all his livelihood, never mind the livelihood of the Servicemember (which he only says he cares for because he gets paid rather well to believe that), depends on it. It's a waste of time to argue the importance of a particular job when the people arguing it have different stakes on it, from an employment perspective.

From my perspective (as a military member) yes the tankers are wicked old, but so are our bomber fleet (I know this rather intimately). If the AF would have tempered their recapitalization priorities away from the one-trick pony fighter pilot generals' wet dream we call the F-22, maybe the tankers and bombers (the backone of the old Strategic Air Command, the archenemy of the current fighter pilot leadership dynasty) would be in better shape. So yes the tanker world has a legitimate case, but so does every other community outside the F-22/F-35 and don't get me started on the Army, and the domestic needs are equally legitimate. So that's a stalemate politically speaking.

As to Boeing in particular, they screwed the pooch with the 767 lease debacle (man people went to jail over that one...) and then tried to do things on the cheap and offered same 767 platform as their answer to the tanker proposal. In the end they got their a$ses handed out to them by the EADS/Grumman alliance and went to cry uncle in congress at the expense of those poor saps in mobile AL (the ones who stood to gain the next pendulum swing in the eternal aeropsace industry worker merry go round of chase-a-job).....though in reality a bunch of people from seattle, st.louis and wichita, never mind the rest of the cotton-pickin' country, would have packed their bags, uprooted their kids out of school and sold their cookie cutters at a loss in the chase of the next big aerospace contract, et al ad nauseam. Sour grapes on the part of Boeing, and yes the Airbus product fared better than the KC-767 from the Air Force RFP perspective (to the Boeing cheerleaders' disagreement of course); nobody in the Air Force was concerned with political implications of perceived "unfair" trade subsidies by the European union, which was Boeing's uncle case to congress.

As to 4500 being a drop in the bucket for Wichita, I don't think so, I think it's substantial and more importantly, symbolic of the fleeting nature of aerospace work and the life impact it has on the desirability of the industry and the impact it has on communities that rely on it, such as seattle, ft. worth, st. louis and yes good ol wichita. I agree with the OP, our economy is a retarded pendulum swing of feast and famine, and it doesn't need to be. The aerospace industry is the poster child for the post-pension brave new world of globalized "move your kids every ten years till daddy and mommy get tired of each other" rat-race america, certainly why I forewent said industry rat race and opted for a career in public service. To each their own of course, my best wishes and luck to the furloughed, may you find more stable employment in the hopefully near future.

As to Boeing, I don't think the KC-135 is an accurate representation of what they ARE or stand for today as an organization, but I sure hope as an American company that they return to their own basics and continue to support the interests of this country (and I fly their product mind you, so I have stake in that statement as well). From an employment perspective however, I just don't consider them or any aerospace firm worthwhile; too fleeting, like working for an ice cream vendor in Siberia during their one day of summer....