Boeing Needs 9,000 Men

AVIATION

In September 1939, burly, tireless Philip Gustav Johnson became president of Boeing Airplane for the second time in his life. His first term ended in 1934, when Boeing was part of United Aircraft, and Johnson, as United president, became a scapegoat in the U.S. Government's abortive 1934 airmail contract cancellation. When Boeing recalled him from Canadian exile five years later, the company was suffering from two interrelated problems: 1) sales were small, its profit & loss statement soaked in red ink; 2) production was painstakingly perfectionist and inefficient.

Boeing's worst feature was its disjointed Plant No. 2, far enough up Seattle's Duwamish River so that fuselages from the No. 1 plant had to be put on barges to reach final assembly. First, Phil Johnson tackled Boeing's sales problem--to get the money to fix its production mess. He haunted the Allied Purchasing Commission's Washington office, wangled enough orders and cash in advance from the French to revamp Plant No. 2. As the war crescendoed, the U.S. Army poured funds in; the white-elephant plant became a huge, fully integrated, $15,000,000 Flying Fortress factory, half Government-owned. By that time Phil Johnson's problem was not getting orders but filling them: his $387,000,000 1942 sales were more than thirty times 1939 production. This year's goals make last year's look like peanuts.

Last week Boeing made good news and bad news: 1) production of B-17s is "far behind schedule" because Boeing cannot get some 9,000 crucially needed workers; 2) after two years' dickering, Phil Johnson bought, for $7,700,000, every last brick and bolt of Plant No. 2.

Not Enough Labor. Last week's Boeing manpower crisis stemmed from three main factors (besides the draft): 1) wage rates in Seattle's booming shipyards are higher, drain off Boeing's workers as fast as they can be trained; 2) Seattle is desperately overcrowded; rents and food prices are skyhigh; new workers soon find out that high war pay is a deception; 3) Boeing labor relations are poor.

Last week the Seattle Times splashed out a big red and black "Plea to Seattle" begging for odd-hour help for Boeing, even from school children, teachers, preachers and Army & Navy men garrisoned nearby. A WPBigwig flew out to tell the Chamber of Commerce that, unless Seattle found 9,000 more workers fast, $40,000,000 of small war contracts would be canceled to free manpower for Boeing. The Chamber hastily launched a desperate save-the-city recruiting drive.

Meanwhile the Aeronautical Mechanics' Union okayed an increase in the work day from eight to ten hours, but its membership voted it down. This jeopardized a stopgap measure Phil Johnson was promoting: a five-hour shift for housewives to cover the gap between two ten-hour shifts. Probability: Flying Fortress production will continue to lag.

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