Good Follow-up on Yesterday's Aerospace Summit

Lots of coverage from the aerospace summit held yesterday. As some of you know, I tried my hand at contemporaneous blogging, essentially pulling quotes from presenters. Mine ended up as a series of posts yesterday - my first shot at laptop on lap coverage of an event. Call it a learning experience.

A nice job, however, was done by Andrea James at the seattlepi.com. Here's her coverage from the event.

James  also reports on the most provocative question asked yesterday: Would Boeing workers consider decertifying the union here? The question, asked by a member of the audience, was triggered by the news yesterday that workers in South Carolina had filed to decertify the plant Boeing acquired in North Charleston. Follow the link for the not-too-surprising responses from labor.

Dominic Gates also has good coverage in this morning's Seattle Times.  His story highlights something that seemed apparent - and troubling - to many at the conference.

...a clear discrepancy emerged there between the Machinists, Boeing and politicians as to the deadline for what needs to be done to win the new 787 line.

As he reports, Boeing's in a hurry and the union thinks it has time.

The only possible guarantee of no-strike when our current contract expires is for Boeing and the Machinists union to be committed to negotiating a settlement and not a strike," (IAM legislative and political director Larry] Brown said.

"We have time to build the kind of relationship we need to make that happen."

In contrast, Boeing's Fred Kiga, vice president of state and local government relations, reiterated that management wants a long-term, no-strike agreement and wants it in place well before the current contract ends.

"I don't believe we have until 2012," said Kiga in an interview.

"We at the Boeing Company have a sense of urgency about finding production stability."

See also this good story in the Everett Herald by Michelle Dunlop.