Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The books from the first printing were hard to find, but now the second printing is out.
When I first saw how hard it was to get, I wondered if John F. McDonnell or Harry Stonecipher were buying them all up! Just kidding, but it does make you wonder.
The authors' make it very clear from the start that the "Boeing" throughout the book is Boeing Commercial Airplanes. That is important to understand. I would even state that the "Boeing" in the book applies to people with a legacy born in the Heritage Boeing Commercial Airplanes (the Puget Sound region).
I have read the book. Right off the bat in the preface I saw that Stan Sorscher and Charlie Bofferding (both former Boeing employees and members of SPEEA, the union representing professional employees at Boeing) were engaged in proofreading or as sources. I thought that it might have a real-life perspective from the engineering perspective. It also explains a few of the stories that are recalled. Ron Woodward's input was a real eye opener! His discussion of Phil Condit was wild!
We all wondered about Phil, at times. Between marrying secretaries multiple times and having houses with unique features (from castle-like architecture to model trains running through them). His involvement/capitulation in settling a particularly contentious IAM strike and the naiive negotiations leading up to the McBoeing merger are mentioned in the book, but I am sure there is much, much more to the story.
One minor dissappointment is typographical, I have never heard former CEO Frank Schrontz called Carl Schrontz.
I also wish they had done their first survey in 1996, pre-merger.When I read it again, I will make sure to look at the footnotes right away.
The feedback from the open-ended questions was very much in synch with my impressions and memory.
I was impressed with how all the various groups responded. The differences in perspective between hourly, managers, engineers and women added to my understanding of how much impact the changes had.
The suprises I found - I did not feel that DCAC/MRM (a complete rework of how Boeing Commercial Airplanes managed the release of drawings and bill of materials) was ever going to work, but it did.
I also did not think I would have had as much sympathy for the impact of change on managers. The open-ended discussion of their perspective was very frank and at times startling.
I thought the coverage on the early retirement offer in 1995, was too brief, but it caught several elements of what came of it. Missing - the fact that many folks took the offer without preparing for it. I think hourly folks probably ended up spending themselves into a hole. Many returned to the workforce, humbling.
My personal experience of the early retirements in 1995, I lost a mentor. He was a 6' 7" Dutchmen born in Indonesia and raised in Mexico. Another engineer from Mexico called him the "Short Mexican." He was so easy to learn from and he worked to the last minute on his last day. He packed up his briefcase, we said our goodbyes and he walked down the hall of the "plywood palace" in Everett. The minute he turned the corner ...I burst into tears. I did very well on my own afterward, but the shock was a sobering realization that he was gone. He worked for Douglas (including the time before McDonnell took them over)before coming to Boeing.
I think the coverage of the SPEEA strike was brief, but there are other books covering that topic.
I was also surprised to see no discussion of the Mullally Migration, the Centralization of a lot of the Engineering functions to Renton after the 777 work wrapped up. Then to see much more people migrate to Everett in an even larger movement of people 10 or so years later.
I agree with the authors' impression that the WARN act has probably done more damage than good in Boeing's hand. Bang vs whimper. The suffering while on "career death row" was not necessary. Since I graduated with my B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1981, I have been laid off three times - all before the WARN act. None of these layoffs were fun, but I always ended up in a better situation. The shortest notice was 4 hours, then 5 days, and finally as a job shopper on the B-2 in 1988, 2 weeks. I wasn't married and didn't have children at the time. I will add that the longest duration between jobs was 3 months.
My impression is that some of the statistics were a little weak to draw too much of a conclusion, but I think the authors were upfront about it.
I wish the period captured at least one year before the pre-McDonnell Douglas merger era and more of the turbulence experienced on the 787 with the schedule slides and other discoveries that have made it to the media. It may have been too sensitive a topic for Boeing to give access to academic researchers, though.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Turbulence: Boeing and the State of American Workers and Managers
This timely book investigates the experiences of employees at all levels of Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) during a ten-year period of dramatic organizational change. As Boeing transformed itself, workers and managers contended with repeated downsizing, shifting corporate culture, new roles for women, outsourcing, mergers, lean production, and rampant technological change. Drawing on a unique blend of quantitative and qualitative research, the authors consider how management strategies affected the well-being of Boeing employees, as well as their attitudes toward their jobs and their company. Boeing employees’ experience holds vital lessons for other employees, the leaders of other firms determined to thrive in today’s era of inescapable and growing global competition, as well as public officials concerned about the well-being of American workers and companies.
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