What's new
What's new

Seattle, Are You Still Alive?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Ox

Diamond
Joined
Aug 27, 2002
Location
Northwest Ohio
With all the planes clogging up airport spillways, is Seattle still proceeding?

I would highly imagine that they would be seeing cancelations or at least "holds" on orders for the time being.

Or maybe they are forging ahead and expecting to just catch up a bit?

Have they even been at werk the last 2 months, or have they been shut down?

???



-------------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
About half of my work is Boeing-related, and that all dropped way off since a few months ago.

On the plus side, the gardens and yard have never looked better :-).

Regards.

Mike
 
We are still alive.

Everything is getting much leaner where I'm at and we just went through some layoffs, but I haven't missed a day of work since the stay at home stuff started. And while commercial planes are sitting, the defense and private sector haven't been impacted much, so that's what's saving us for now. We did have some large contracts for the MAX though, so we are definitely feeling this.
 
Yeah, I could actually see the Lear stuff taking off as commercial flights are so unsure and less to choose from at this time.


---------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
Boeing work is somewhat of a staple to a lot of small shops around here. That work has disappeared from shops I know. Some shops are down 50-75%. Some are busy as ever. Strange times.
 
I do work for 2 shops in the Seattle area, both are struggling, office staff are working from home, machinists are working 3-4 day weeks etc etc

I don't ask them how they see the future as I think I know the answer.
 
Yeah, I could actually see the Lear stuff taking off as commercial flights are so unsure and less to choose from at this time.


---------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Why rent a lear when you can rent a 747 for the same rate....:skep:
 
Heard a report on the radio yesterday that Boeing was planning to cut about 10% of a 160,000 workforce. Some layoffs, some buyouts, most from the Seattle area plants.
 
Boeing had zero orders in the month of April. Between this corona virus thing and the 737 Max debacle, they haven't had a year this bad since 1962. Boeing in the Seattle area is looking to shed about 12,000 employees. Just under 6,000 took voluntary layoffs with some kind of payouts, leaving a little over 6,000 people wondering who's going to win the pink slip lottery on Friday. I am very fortunate to have a job not tied to airplanes.
 
We have not won a Boeing order in over 6 months - the 737Max slow down started well before COVID-19. Part of our motivation to move into a bigger facility is that we had won approval of our DPD process, gotten our quality program approved by Boeing and earned supplier approval for fixture automation and ground support equipment manufacturing. The purchasing people that toured our facility up the road said we needed a bigger place, our largest customer told us the same thing . . .

So we took the plunge and here we are! $45k/month for mortgage and property taxes and the only thing we have come across our desk from Boeing is the odd wiring harness or CNC retrofit. Net 120 / 100% due on successful Customer Acceptance Test are standard terms and then you wait another 20 - 40 days after that to get paid after reminding them that they haven't paid.

We are very fortunate that Boeing is normally less than 30% of our business.
 
Boeing had zero orders in the month of April. Between this corona virus thing and the 737 Max debacle, they haven't had a year this bad since 1962. Boeing in the Seattle area is looking to shed about 12,000 employees. Just under 6,000 took voluntary layoffs with some kind of payouts, leaving a little over 6,000 people wondering who's going to win the pink slip lottery on Friday. I am very fortunate to have a job not tied to airplanes.

I hope things have changed for them, if not they will be in for a rude awakening if they worked at Boeing for a long time and end up needing to seek employment in a non union shop elsewhere. It was either late 80's early 90's when Boeing in SoCal had a huge lay-off. The place I worked at had consolidated a couple locations in to our plant recently and most employees did not come, so we had quite a few openings. Even though we had great pay and benefits for a non union shop it wasn't close to what Boeing paid and with union rules of the time their machinists had limited skills. As a shop lead who was basically assistant contact primary supervisor I was involved in the interview process. I was blown away about how no one there was allowed to stray from their very detailed job description. The machinists that I interviewed were not even allowed to edit programs, they weren't even allowed to change a light bulb on a tool lamp.

It kind of sucked that we had so many openings and only hired two Boeing guys. Gary and Wendell, I still remember their names. They slowly adapted to the non-union way of life, but it took some work.
 
Net 120 / 100% due on successful Customer Acceptance Test are standard terms and then you wait another 20 - 40 days after that to get paid after reminding them that they haven't paid.

Do you jack the quote up for giving interest free loans? Definitely not on your scale, but I had a customer who was habitually very late. He made decent money for a one man band but he wasted money living like a multi-millionaire. I slowly jacked up what I charged him to where he was paying shop rate + 50%. I did business with him for 10 years and he finally stiffed me out of $30k. I still think I at least got the better end of the deal.
 
My BIL works at Boeing (Everett). Works in commercial, upgrades & retrofits. He is a long time employee and is walking on eggshells. There is a large layoff looming that will hit in a few days. BIL is married to my sister (duh), who was layed-off from Starbucks HQ. Now if Dan looses his job at Boeing, the two of them unemployed, they are really going to be hit hard.
 
Which brings up another point about our fair state related to unemployment insurance. Our state has been the target of the largest unemployment benefit fraud scheme in history. I along with 2 of my employees were recently sent notices confirming that we were indeed laid off and they needed to confirm that we were needing to continue to receive benefits. WHAT!?!?

It appears someone had gotten enough of our personal information including SS #’s and employment information to file for unemployment in our names. We contested and the state got back to each of us after a week or so saying they registered it as fraud and that it wouldn’t affect our experience rating.

Now I have my SS# being monitored and trying to figure out how best to get my credit monitored.

All this has created the situation where people with legitimate unemployment claims take weeks or months to qualify.
 
Has there been any positive new for Boeing on the space front? Last few things I read were none too positive about the Starliner. A friend just moved out there to work for space daddy Bezos, luckily they run on monopoly money so its all fun and games there for the moment.
 
Which brings up another point about our fair state related to unemployment insurance. Our state has been the target of the largest unemployment benefit fraud scheme in history. I along with 2 of my employees were recently sent notices confirming that we were indeed laid off and they needed to confirm that we were needing to continue to receive benefits. WHAT!?!?

It appears someone had gotten enough of our personal information including SS #’s and employment information to file for unemployment in our names. We contested and the state got back to each of us after a week or so saying they registered it as fraud and that it wouldn’t affect our experience rating.

Now I have my SS# being monitored and trying to figure out how best to get my credit monitored.

All this has created the situation where people with legitimate unemployment claims take weeks or months to qualify.

this morning in the paper, the State issued a press release claiming to have recovered 300 million dollars in fraudulent claims.
They dont mention what amount of fraudulent claims they HAVENT gotten back, but total claims paid since March are around $4.7 Billion- so something like 8% of all claims were fake, at the least. They say its mostly from the Equifax data breach of 2017- apparently you can still buy that data if you want, on the black market.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.








 
Back
Top