On September 3, 2013 in the Business section of the Los Angeles Times, Dominic Gates writes that Boeing intends to change the way the plane’s metal hull is built, reducing manual labor while amping up overall production.
Boeing aims through automation to make fabricating the fuselage sections much more efficient, enabling it to increase the 777 production rate from today’s 8.3 jets per month potentially to 10 or 12 jests per month.
The research is aimed at heading off competition from the Airbus A350-1000 by increasing 777 production substantially above the current rate of 100 jets per year.
This is the never-ending march of technology and representative of the state of tectonic shifts in the technologies of production that are destroying jobs and devaluing the worth of labor. The question should be WHO OWNS this FUTURE productive capital asset growth? The employees should be the first in line to be empowered to acquire ownership stakes in the Boeing Company using an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) to pay for their acquisition of shares of stock with pre-tax dollars via capital credit loans which would be paid pack out of FUTURE profits to be generated by the increased production rate.