Photo credit: Flickr/Melvin Loi (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Thirty-two thousand workers at Boeing have courageously gone on strike to demand decent wages, job security and the right to retire with dignity. We support them 100%. But why should workers have to negotiate with the greedy, criminal executives at Boeing in the first place? Our Vote Socialist 2024 campaign wants to seize Boeing from its billionaire owners and turn it into public property. Here’s why and how it would work.
Workers create all wealth
In the most fundamental sense, the seizure of Boeing is justified by the fact that every penny the company has ever made is thanks to the workers, not the executives and shareholders. The CEO of Boeing has never worked on an assembly line, he’s never helped manufacture or maintain a plane, and he certainly doesn’t test the planes to make sure they’re safe. If the CEO or any of the other top executives never came into the office again, it wouldn’t matter, because the workers do all the work.
Why should the company be run by millionaires and billionaires who have never worked a day in their lives? If Boeing is taken over by the public, then the productive power of the company can be used to make everyone’s lives better while ensuring that workers have power on the job and a decent standard of living.
Deadly corner-cutting on safety
In 2018 and 2019, the world was shocked at two horrific plane crashes involving Boeing 737 Max jets that took the lives of 346 people. And just this January, passengers were terrified when the door of a Boeing jet fell out of the plane mid-flight. It is clear that the executives at Boeing have systematically cut corners and implemented faulty policies that lead to disasters like these. In fact, they were only able to avoid criminal charges by making a sweetheart deal with the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department in 2022.
Workers want to produce safe planes and the public wants to fly safely — let’s cut out the executives who only want to make money!
Massive subsidies and government contracts
If the exploitation of its workers and the criminal conduct of its executives weren’t enough, consider this — taxpayers have essentially already paid for Boeing many times over in the form of enormous government subsidies. The researchers at Good Jobs First found that over the years Boeing has received $15.5 billion in subsidies, and $75 billion in government loans and bailouts. Last year, 37% of Boeing sales came from the U.S. government.
Executives have decided to make the company dependent on war and militarism. In 2022, the company made $14.8 billion in sales to the Pentagon. Under the control of the workers and the public, the company could be reoriented towards peace instead of war.
The public — especially people who live in Washington state, home of Boeing — have in effect already paid for the company. Let’s take what’s ours!
How does a public company function?
Seizing Boeing means replacing economic dictatorship with economic democracy. We get to vote for city council members, representatives, senators, governors — why shouldn’t we get to vote for the people who run the places we work too?
Right now the company operates according to the whims of executives and big shareholders. If we seize Boeing, then decisions would be made through a partnership between the workers who build the planes and the broader public that relies on the products the workers produce. Elected public officials would work with the union to set goals for production, standards for safety and environmental protection, and more. Workers would elect managers, who would make decisions about the day-to-day operation of the workplace together with the elected leaders of the union. That’s our vision: socialism.
