Southern states add to their Boeing sales pitch

In Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and the Carolinas, business and government leaders recently watched the Machinists’ strike at Boeing with rapt attention, wondering if Boeing’s frustration might prompt it to someday bring an airplane plant to the South.

Right-to-work laws in Southern states, they say, would prevent such costly walkouts.

But the South has another compelling selling point: its industrial muscle. Increasingly, the nation’s aerospace center of gravity is shifting south, creating an extensive and growing base of hundreds of aerospace companies producing helicopters, aircraft assemblies — even Boeing rockets.

“If I was a Boeing executive, I’d look at the state of Alabama and see there’s a qualified work force ... I’d take a look at the assets we have,” said Stephen Nodine, president of the Mobile County Commission, whose offices are in Mobile, Ala.

This is not to say Boeing Commercial Airplanes has any immediate plans to do anything other than getting its Everett and Renton assembly plants fully running again, and sending delayed aircraft of nearly every model into the air.

But sometime in the next decade Boeing may launch a high-tech successor to the 737, its most popular plane; the company also may upgrade its 777 model or develop a second 787 production line.

In a recent interview, Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Scott Carson said Boeing isn’t actively looking at any other sites for plants. But he doesn’t rule out the possibility it could.

“Clearly there’s frustration over the labor situation in Washington, and frustration about being able to be held hostage by a single bargaining unit,” he said. “Will it increase pressure to find another place to do manufacturing in the future? Perhaps.”

While eager for Boeing, economic development leaders in Southern states admit they’re keeping their tactics hidden, not wanting to tip each other off about their strategies for attracting more work from the nation’s largest aerospace company.

“Boeing is a valuable company, and one we will try to attract more and more in the state of Georgia,” said Ken Stewart, commissioner for the Georgia Department of Economic Development, talking slightly more generally. “We will be talking to Boeing on a regular basis to try to attract them to the state of Georgia, no doubt about it.”

Certainly, labor laws are important to the effort to lure Boeing. Even though Carson said the question of whether Boeing is in a right-to-work state isn’t in his mind a critical issue, Southern leaders see it differently.

Right-to-work states don’t require workers to pay union dues if they’re in a unionized company, a provision that tends to undermine union power. All the Southern states are right-to-work states, while West Coast and East Coast states are not.

“It’s been a big factor for other companies and other industries in the state,” said Gray Swoope, executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority. “Companies today that want to maintain a nonunion work force, that’s important to them.”

At the same time, Southerners are not shy in pointing out how rapidly the South has become an aerospace region, landing a series of new aerospace manufacturing plants. In the last few years, for instance, Mississippi has added a General Electric factory producing composite fan blades for jet engines and a helicopter plant is going up for the European Airbus consortium.

Swoope said Mississippi’s strategy, in addition to a right-to-work environment and financial incentives, is to refine the training and knowledge base of the area, partly through strengthening relationships between the state’s universities and private industry, in order to develop a skills base in advanced technologies including composite construction.

“We’re not just interested in manufacturing, we’re interested beyond that, and how do you build capacity,” he said. “We’re even more thrilled GE is going to be working with (Mississippi State University) to partner with them in building the next generation of aircraft.”

Right next door, Alabama has more than doubled its number of aerospace suppliers to 200 in less than 20 years, with current private sector aerospace employment of more than 36,000.

And in a related industry, Mississippi and Alabama have added five auto plants since 1993; none of them is from the big three domestic automakers now teetering on the precipice of bankruptcy.

Aware that they’re working against Boeing’s incumbency in Washington — the sense that Washington is home to a mature aerospace industry with many skilled workers and companies — economic boosters in the South tend to emphasize their region’s capabilities. This is defined by the history of the Civil War South, by the French heritage, and by the states’ proximity to each other along the defining Gulf Coast. The French heritage also has something to do with Southerners’ sense of comfort with Airbus.

For instance, Nodine was instrumental in creating an organization called the Gulf Coast Aerospace Corridor, complete with a website, which touts the strength of the aerospace industry in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, and the presence of large prime contractors including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing.

Boeing already has large operations in the South, and economic development experts want to build on that presence.