The production line for Boeing’s newest plane is Washington’s to win, but state and local governments still must work diligently to gain Boeing’s favor, the chief executive of the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County said Friday.
Bruce Kendall said a new study released this week makes it clear that the Puget Sound area has significant advantages over rival states to win Boeing’s nod as the locale for the final assembly of the company’s 737 MAX aircraft.
“I’d rather be us than Texas. I’d rather be us than Kansas. I’d rather be us than North Carolina,” Kendall told The News Tribune editorial board Friday, speaking of three of the states expected to challenge Washington for the assembly plant site.
The 737 MAX is the latest generation of Boeing’s best-selling single aisle aircraft, the 737. The new plane, still on the drawing boards, will have more fuel- efficient engines, improved aerodynamics and updated amenities when it enters service in 2017. Boeing builds the current generation of the 737 in Renton now. That site has a head start against rival sites to win the newest version of the plane, the study said.
Kendall and Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy said much more is at stake than the assembly line itself. In Pierce County, for instance, some 100 companies supply parts and pieces to the aerospace industry. That’s in addition to Boeing’s own big plant at Frederickson, where the company produces parts for nearly every Boeing commercial plane, including the 737 and tail structures for the 777 and 787. That Boeing plant employs 1,900 workers.
A new study by the consulting firm Accenture, released this week by Gov. Chris Gregoire, said the area’s network of aerospace suppliers like those in Pierce County and its thousands of experienced aerospace workers gives the region an advantage over other states that may bid for the new plant.
But the state needs to bolster its education efforts to develop more aerospace workers and engineers, said McCarthy, because the present supply of those workers is thinning.
Pierce County’s state legislative delegation can help ensure that aerospace vocations become a high priority for the state’s education system, even while the state is cutting budgets back, said Kendall. And business and civic leaders can help be a bridge between Boeing and its unions to keep labor peace in the state, he said.
Boeing’s two largest unions, the Machinists and the Society of Engineering Employees in Aerospace, will be negotiating for a new contract next year. Boeing two years ago decided to build an assembly line for its 787 in South Carolina in part because it wanted no strikes. South Carolina is a right-to-work state where organizing labor unions is more difficult.
John Gillie: 253-597-8663
john.gillie@thenewstribune.com
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