SEATTLE, WA--Puget Sound and Southern California account for 71 percent of Boeing engineering jobs today. In two years that number will plunge to 40 percent. No workers can escape the capitalist crisis; every worker has reason to mobilize the masses for communism.

Boeing will move these jobs to low-wage, non-union Huntsville, AL; North Charleston, SC; and St. Louis, MO. Workers there will earn $60,000/year less in wages and benefits, meaning hundreds of millions in extra profits.

Local engineers will have to reapply to get jobs in other areas. Most will never be offered new positions--even at reduced wages. The Boeing bosses will fill the workforce gaps with temporary contract labor in the U.S. and overseas.

The Puget Sound engineers' union is the last with defined pensions. The union already gave away those pensions for new hires. All will most likely be gone when the next contract comes up in two years.

"[This move] has sown widespread dissent and distrust, according to internal employee feedback gathered by company managers," reported the Seattle Times (4/15). Boeing's excuses were "greeted by complete dismissal and outrage" in crew meeting after crew meeting.

Capitalist Crisis Brings War on Workers Worldwide

For decades, party members and others have calculated how long the average Boeing employee had to work to pay for his or her wage and benefits. The time remained relatively consistent, a little more than two hours.  The other 5-6 hours went to the company ("surplus labor").

 This legal thievery was bad enough.  With all the cutbacks of the last few years, however, we only get, on average, the value of somewhat more than hour.  The rate of exploitation has more than doubled.

Subcontractor workers, who are proportionately more black or latino/a, suffer even more intense racist exploitation.

Workers in the US are not alone. For example, Indian autoworkers have been taking company bigwigs hostage as plant after plant revolts. These massive rebellions are a direct result of the skyrocketing rate of exploitation since the bosses' economic crisis began in 2008. Here, too, "necessary labor" has plummeted from over two hours to about one hour.

It will get worse. Boeing already sells new planes at a 50% discount, facing competition from Airbus now and fearing the rise of other competitors, chiefly China, in the next decade. To meet the commitments it has already made, Boeing will have to attack workers harder.

The communist Karl Marx predicted this crisis of overproduction and the impoverishment of the working class over a century ago.

Take Production Out of Capitalists' Hands

Trade unions have no answer. The forces the bosses can bring to bear overwhelm reformist trade union ideology.

A systemic problem requires a systemic solution: communist revolution.  Take production out of the capitalists' hands. No more production for sale and profit!

Communist production will advance the struggle for all the world's workers. We can produce for our collective need.  This changes, not only the economy, but also the whole of culture and humanity.

Capitalism not only pits boss against boss, but also worker against worker. Local Boeing engineers, for instance, are pitted against engineers around the country and the world.   In the face of this competition, trade unions partner with their particular boss.  Communists, in contrast, build international class unity.

Under communism we welcome helping hands. They give us extra time to use in the struggle for revolutionary production and culture. We can turn factories into educational and cultural centers. Our work will no longer depend on whether some bosses can make money off of us, but on our contribution to society.

The bosses divide mental labor (engineering) from manual labor (production), and in the end we all get the shaft. Join us in struggling for a world based on collective labor that destroys artificial divisions of mental and manual labor, nation, location, race and sex that hurt us all.

There's a future worth fighting for!

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