A fun way to bring your favorite Web browser to a grinding halt – if that’s your idea of a good time – would be to type in the following terms in the search window: Boeing, 787 and “wake-up call.”
The number of press releases and official statements employing that last phrase would, if printed on paper and then laid end-to-end along the interstate roadside, stretch from the shores of Puget Sound to North Charleston, S.C., which is, coincidentally enough, the location Boeing has chosen for the second 787 final-assembly line.
To judge from the number of times the phrase “wake-up call” was invoked, one would be inclined to think that the idea of Boeing producing commercial aircraft somewhere other than Washington state came as a great shock to the region’s officialdom in government, business, labor and civic circles, and the selection of South Carolina as an assembly point will jolt the region into action.
With that in mind, some thoughts about whether Boeing’s 787 announcement constituted a “wake-up call” for this region:
1. No it didn’t.
2. If the Puget Sound region and the state of Washington think this latest announcement was a wake-up call, Rip Van Winkle thinks we’re a bunch of lazy layabouts.
3. If the region has been expecting a wake-up call, then it’s already missed whatever event or trend it was expecting to be alerted to.
4. What is there in the history of this state and this region to suggest that whatever useful wisdom can be salvaged from a wake-up call at this late hour will be heeded or acted upon?
The notion that the region had no warning until now that it faces the prospect, with the loss of its primary industry, of turning into Detroit with better seafood is easily refuted by the historical record: The now-legendary Frank Shrontz speech to the Seattle chamber in 1991. The headquarters move to Chicago. The competition for the first 787 assembly line.
Or consider the speech, delivered in October 1999 to the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce (meeting in Spokane) by then-Chief Financial Officer Deborah Hopkins.
Recounting Shrontz’s remark about the possibility of Seattle becoming an “aerospace rust belt,” Hopkins said that Boeing wanted Washington to remain an aerospace center – but not, she added, “at any cost.”
In comparing operating costs, Hopkins said, “Out of the 27 locations where Boeing has plants and employees, Washington came out 16th. And the main reason our state ranked that high – and I don’t consider the bottom half to be that high – is because of Washington’s historically low energy rates.
“This is not a pretty picture. Compared to everywhere else we do business, Washington is below average. To remain a global leader for aerospace – and a global leader for other industries – Washington has to rank a whole lot higher than that.”
She also told the chamber, “We’re now living in a world where companies move at the speed of the Internet just to stay in place. And the only rule of the Internet is ‘The first mover wins most.’ Is Washington prepared to be the first mover? Is Washington prepared to move at the speed of light? Right now, I don’t think so. We can get there. But we have to take the right steps.”
That enough of a wake-up call for you?
Apparently not, if successive events and the region’s reactions are any indication.
Acknowledging the threat is not the same thing as acquiescing to every demand of the threat maker. Washington could have made a credible, if debatable, decision to say, “we can’t afford to compete for this industry any more. We’ll do what we can, and in the meantime see if there’s something else to support our economy.”
It could also have made the defensible if controversial decision that “Boeing is too crucial to our economy. We’ll do whatever it takes to keep the company here.”
Instead it did neither, relying on the faulty assumption that Boeing was as movable as Mount Rainier.
If various insider accounts are to be credited, South Carolina didn’t assume that. Even after losing the competition for the first 787 line it continued to refine its offer and kept after Boeing, putting itself in ideal position to win the second round of competition.
Relying on wake-up calls is hazardous enough even when they’re answered. The information being relayed might be no good, or misinterpreted in the fog of drowsiness. Or it might be too late to be of any use (one executive recently noted the region’s propensity for not acting until the problem of the moment has reached emergency status, and sometimes not even then).
Or the information might be perfectly accurate but of no use. Tacoma, for example, got its “uh oh, this can’t be good” moment on Russell Investments in 1999 when Northwestern Mutual bought the company; many Tacomans knew then that a move was a distinct possibility, not that efforts to keep the company in town did much good. The state and region, meanwhile, might be able to argue that the leading factor driving Boeing out of town – soured relations with its unions – was beyond their power to control.
What they can’t contest, though, is that both got plenty of warnings, from Boeing and from even a casual reading of trends, that the company’s departure was a possibility.
Wake-up alarms aren’t of much value when the recipient keeps hitting the snooze button.
Bill Virgin’s column on business and economics appears Sundays in The News Tribune. He is editor and publisher of Washington Manufacturing Alert and Pacific Northwest Rail News. He can be reached at bill.virgin@yahoo.com.
