Jim McNerney was Boeing’s president and CEO from 2005 to 2015 and Chairman from 2005 to 2016. He is corporate royalty: Yale, Harvard MBA, time at McKinsey and GE, CEO of MMM – then Boeing. Today’s Boeing is his creation, which he was paid over $100 million to build.
Michael Kinsey’s definition of a gaffe “is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” There are few better examples than this during Boeing’s quarterly earnings conference on 24 July 2014. This was the year after problems with 787 cost Boeing tens of billions – caused by McNerney’s aggressive outsourcing of jobs away from Seattle’s skilled unionized workers.
Bloomberg News: “Jim, you have a birthday coming up next month. …Will you be at your desk, and has the Board approved you staying on past age 65?”
Jim McNerney: “Yes, the heart will still be beating. The employees will still be cowering (laughing). I’ll be working hard; there’s no end in sight. We’re continuing to build the succession plan …But there’s no discussion of it yet. So you’ll still be asking questions of me.”
This is the mind of a modern American CEO. He was not kidding. Boeing’s executives worked hard to demoralize its workers (the most recent round earlier in 2014). McNerney exulted in his success.
In this Boeing stands with other corporate leaders such as those of Amazon, Nike, and Walmart in forging a new corporate-worker relationship: plutocrat and peon. It’s natural that their great success creates contempt for their employees. They have weakened or broken their unions. They converted much of their workforce into contingent, low wage, no benefit proles.
These executives are capitalists in the sense of living off America’s accumulated social capital. They are leeches. The greatness of America is shown by the length of time it has taken them to ruin formerly great companies such as GE and IBM, reducing them to shells of their former selves.
Unless we change America’s corporate structures, more companies will decay. It is built on law and custom, and under our control – if we have the will and wit to act.
This decay is part of the slow collapse of America’s institutions described in A new, dark picture of America’s future. These problems seem unrelated and overwhelming, but they have a common cause in our apathy. We have let slip the reins of America.
“A society does not ever die ‘from natural causes’, but always dies from suicide or murder – and nearly always from the former ….”
Arnold Joseph Toynbee: A Study of History.
Bloomberg News: “Jim, you have a birthday coming up next month. …Will you be at your desk, and has the Board approved you staying on past age 65?”
Jim McNerney: “Yes, the heart will still be beating. The employees will still be cowering (laughing). I’ll be working hard; there’s no end in sight. We’re continuing to build the succession plan …But there’s no discussion of it yet. So you’ll still be asking questions of me.”
This is the mind of a modern American CEO. He was not kidding. Boeing’s executives worked hard to demoralize its workers (the most recent round earlier in 2014). McNerney exulted in his success.
In this Boeing stands with other corporate leaders such as those of Amazon, Nike, and Walmart in forging a new corporate-worker relationship: plutocrat and peon. It’s natural that their great success creates contempt for their employees. They have weakened or broken their unions. They converted much of their workforce into contingent, low wage, no benefit proles.
These executives are capitalists in the sense of living off America’s accumulated social capital. They are leeches. The greatness of America is shown by the length of time it has taken them to ruin formerly great companies such as GE and IBM, reducing them to shells of their former selves.
Unless we change America’s corporate structures, more companies will decay. It is built on law and custom, and under our control – if we have the will and wit to act.
This decay is part of the slow collapse of America’s institutions described in A new, dark picture of America’s future. These problems seem unrelated and overwhelming, but they have a common cause in our apathy. We have let slip the reins of America.
“A society does not ever die ‘from natural causes’, but always dies from suicide or murder – and nearly always from the former ….”
Arnold Joseph Toynbee: A Study of History.
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