Socialist Seattle Pol Off Deep End

[acesfull86]

Link

SEATTLE —

Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state

“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night.

This week, Sawant became Seattle’s first elected Socialist council member. She ran on a platform of anti-capitalism, workers’ rights, and a $15 per-hour minimum wage for Seattle workers.
On Monday night, she spoke to supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company pensions.

Now Boeing is threatening to take those jobs to other states. “That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it's going to devastate the state's economy,” she said.

Sawant is calling for machinists to literally take-possession of the Everett airplane-building factory, if Boeing moves out. She calls that "democratic ownership."

“The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don't need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do,” she said.

Sawant says after workers “take-over” the Everett Boeing plant; they could build things everyone can use.

“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.

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Got my LOL for the day. Forget buses, why not just make...like...art, man. I love how she just takes for granted that this would all be a piece of cake.

[jpx7]

Read about this yesterday; I think it's awesome.

[sturg33]

LOL

[Julio3000]

Link

SEATTLE —

Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state

“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night.

This week, Sawant became Seattle’s first elected Socialist council member. She ran on a platform of anti-capitalism, workers’ rights, and a $15 per-hour minimum wage for Seattle workers.
On Monday night, she spoke to supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company pensions.

Now Boeing is threatening to take those jobs to other states. “That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it's going to devastate the state's economy,” she said.

Sawant is calling for machinists to literally take-possession of the Everett airplane-building factory, if Boeing moves out. She calls that "democratic ownership."

“The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don't need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do,” she said.

Sawant says after workers “take-over” the Everett Boeing plant; they could build things everyone can use.

“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.

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Got my LOL for the day. Forget buses, why not just make...like...art, man. I love how she just takes for granted that this would all be a piece of cake.

I love it how you just take for granted that Boeing's not utterly full of ****.

[BedellBrave]

Whether Boeing is full of excrement or not seems somewhat beside the point.

[acesfull86]

Whether Boeing is full of excrement or not seems somewhat beside the point.

Right

[Julio3000]

LOL

Ha. You of all people, LOLing at someone else's pie-in-the-sky political ideals.

[sturg33]

Ha. You of all people, LOLing at someone else's pie-in-the-sky political ideals.

Dude… you so just got me

[Julio3000]

Whether Boeing is full of excrement or not seems somewhat beside the point.

Is the point "ha ha, look at the funny socialist*"? If so then, yes, I did.

So what she said is unrealistic on a number of levels. OK, fine. But the implication is that the poster uncritically assumes that Boeing's conduct—as a stand-in for American corporate/political culture overall, even?—is just the natural order of things, rather than an extreme position in its own right.

*who seems to be an actual example of the breed, which leads me to wonder if some of y'all will consider comparing the frequency of accusations of "socialism" with the incidence of actual socialists.

[acesfull86]

Is the point "ha ha, look at the funny socialist*"?

I'm just glad I found this gem. Should provide plenty of LOL's for the rest of her term.

Having trouble seeing what is extreme about Boeing's proposal. Boeing offered long term job stability + a $10,000 signing bonus + increased 401k contribution to its employees in exchange for ending the companies' pension plan (for younger workers) + a pay raise limit + an increase in health care costs to the employee (where have I heard this recently). The contract was put to a vote andthe vote didn't pass by about a 2:1 margin. Now Boeing is exploring other options as to where to build its products, both in and out of the US, assuming they can't make a deal in Seattle. Do they have an obligation to provide the people of Seattle with jobs versus people in South Carolina, people in Japan, or people anywhere else? I guess this is the point where I side with Boeing. Maybe the Seattle workers are getting a crappier deal than the one they've had, but if people elsewhere (let's say in SC, where Boeing has an assembly line) are happy to take the deal being offered, I don't know why I should care more about the Seattle workers than the Carolina workers.

[acesfull86]

link

By contrast, this from Sawant is some real socialism. Boeing is getting a bunch of orders for its new 777X planes. The company tried to use the lure of building those planes in Washington State to get the machinists union to agree to some concessions in other areas of negotiation. The machinists said no. So on the face of it, 777X production is going to end up somewhere else. Sawant thinks the union should counter by seizing the means of production.

Can Boeing's front-line workers actually retool an airplane factory and turn it to bus production and win contracts to sell buses that raise enough revenue to keep everyone employed? Only time will tell for sure, but in the real world the answer is "no." This is exactly what you need executives for. Retooling plants, establishing relationships with suppliers and customers, understanding the size of the market for buses, and all that other stuff is a nontrivial task.

[Hawk]

The Boeing Dreamliner assembly is housed in the city where I live in SC. The factory is non union (right-to-work state) and the land and taxes were/are pure sweetheart. Business is business. The state wanted Boeing bad.

Boeing is like an adrenaline shot to a local economy -- a fair number of high income jobs, many local, some contracted in (helping the housing market) ... but the term is unspecified. If you are willing to play that game and understand and accept the risk of being burned, so be it.

[BedellBrave]

Is the point "ha ha, look at the funny socialist*"? If so then, yes, I did.

So what she said is unrealistic on a number of levels. OK, fine. But the implication is that the poster uncritically assumes that Boeing's conduct—as a stand-in for American corporate/political culture overall, even?—is just the natural order of things, rather than an extreme position in its own right.

*who seems to be an actual example of the breed, which leads me to wonder if some of y'all will consider comparing the frequency of accusations of "socialism" with the incidence of actual socialists.

I wasn't asking you if you got ace's point - I assumed you did. I was just stating that your post was beside the point. But to answer your question Julio, yes, that was what I took ace's point to have been particularly in light of the title of the thread and him not stating otherwise.

But as to the implication, warranted or not, that you drew, I ask, what's wrong with Boeing's conduct in this case? If memory serves me correctly from my days interacting a bit with Boeing, I always got the impression they were a good company to work for. Course that was years ago and only anecdotal.

[The Chosen One]

Speaking of socialism... I happen to know somebody personally that just gave away money to a bunch of lazy freeloaders.

[goldfly]

How silly

I mean, the city council member views life different than you do aces

that is hilarious

thanks for posting so i could laugh at someone thinking that life should be different than the bull**** system we have now where more people could be better off than the system in place now

[acesfull86]

How silly

I mean, the city council member views life different than you do aces

that is hilarious

thanks for posting so i could laugh at someone thinking that life should be different than the bull**** system we have now where more people could be better off than the system in place now

Yes...workers taking over the factories and plants they work in by force would surely make for a better country.

[BedellBrave]

Well couldn't they manufacture pixie dust instead of fuel-guzzling, pollution-generating, planet-destroying jets?

[jpx7]

Well couldn't they manufacture pixie dust instead of fuel-guzzling, pollution-generating, planet-destroying jets?

No: the Pixie-Dust copyright is currently owned by GlaxoSmithKline, and they're very litigious. They could maybe make a generic, though, such as Pigsies' Genuine Power-Powder or Sprites-Meal.

[BedellBrave]

Anybody got any reason why Boeing's conduct is wrong here?

[jpx7]

Anybody got any reason why Boeing's conduct is wrong here?

It really depends on your definition of "wrong" and in what context you're considering "wrongness" — regardless, within the capitalist system, it is certainly the natural, obvious, and expected conduct for a large corporation.

Hawk is right when he writes: "Business is business." That's why I think the system is atavistic and iniquitous and we should be seeking something better for our species, instead of just being "willing to play [the] game" and allowing ourselves and our communities to be held hostage to the profit-crazed whims of an uncaring oligarchy.