The strike by workers at Boeing factories is over, but this is only one of the company’s problems

The union said its workers could return to work as soon as Wednesday or by November 12. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said it could take “several weeks” to resume production, in part because some workers may need retraining.

As drivers return to work, management will have to deal with a number of other issues. The company must have a better financial base. But as it does so, it must prioritize the quality of its workmanship and its relationships with employees and suppliers, analysts said.

Boeing has been able to meet short-term profit targets and is “squeezing every stakeholder, squeezing every employee, every supplier to the point of failure to maximize its short-term financial performance,” Mukunda said. “It’s bad enough if you’re running a clothing company. It’s unacceptable when you’re building the most complex mass-produced machines that humans have ever built.”

Above all, Boeing needs to produce more planes. When the workers come back and production resumes, the company will be producing about 30 737s a month, and “they have to get that number over 50. They have to. And the people who will do that are the factory workers,” said Mukunda.

Another challenge will be getting the company’s fragile supply chain working again, said Cai von Rumohr, an aviation analyst at financial services firm TD Cowen. Suppliers working ahead of Boeing’s schedule when the strike began would have had to lay off workers or fund operations themselves.

“There are a lot of ugly questions in terms of the complexities that are involved in renewing the supply chain,” he said.

One way Boeing could generate cash would be to sell companies that are not directly in the business, such as flight information provider Jeppesen Sanderson, which it bought in 2000 for $1.5 billion, von said. Rumor.

“They would lose some earnings, but they would get a lot of money to reduce their debt,” he added. “They really need to get into a more stable position where they have a solid credit rating.”

Ortberg acknowledged the challenges ahead in a message to employees after they voted to end the walkout.

“There is much work ahead to return to the excellence that has made Boeing an iconic company,” he said.

Boeing’s average annual salary is currently $75,608 and will eventually rise to $119,309 under the new contract, according to the company. The union said the compound value of the promised wage increase would amount to an increase of more than 43 percent over the life of the agreement.

Reactions were mixed even among union members who voted to accept the contract.

Although he voted yes, Seattle calibration specialist Eep Bolaño said the result was “definitely not a victory.” Bolaño said she and her colleagues made a wise but nerve-wracking choice to accept the offer.

“We were threatened by a company that was crippled, dying, bleeding on the ground, and we, one of the largest unions in the country, could not extract even two-thirds of our demands from them. This is humiliating,” she said.

For other workers like William Gardiner, laboratory leader in calibration services, the revised offer was cause for celebration.

“I’m extremely excited about this vote,” said Gardiner, who has worked for Boeing for 13 years. “I didn’t fix everything – that’s okay. Overall, it’s a very positive contract.”

Along with the wage increase, the new contract gives each worker a $12,000 ratification bonus and preserves a performance bonus that the company wanted to eliminate.

President Joe Biden congratulated the machinists and Boeing for reaching an agreement that he said supports workplace fairness and improves workers’ ability to retire with dignity. The contract, he said, is important to Boeing’s future as “a critical part of America’s aerospace sector.”

A continued strike would have thrown Boeing additional financial risk and uncertainty. Last month, Ortberg announced plans to do just that lay off about 17,000 people and a stock sale to prevent the reduction of the company’s credit rating to junk status.

The work stoppage — Boeing’s first strike since an eight-week walkout in 2008 — was the latest setback in a volatile year for the aerospace giant.

Boeing was under several federal investigations this year after a doorstop a 737 Max plane exploded during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. Federal regulators have imposed limits on Boeing plane production that they said will last until they feel confident manufacturing safety at the company.

The door plug incident has renewed concerns about the safety of the 737 Max. Two of the planes crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. The then-CEO, whose efforts to fix the company failed, announced in March that he would resign. In July, Boeing agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud for deceiving regulators who approved the 737 Max.

— David Koenig, Lindsey Wasson, Hannah Schoenbaum and Cathy Bussewitz, The Associated Press