Stir over Boeing resembles 'Blue Bell'

Seven years ago, DaimlerChrysler officials swung the prospect of building a $754 million Sprinter van plant over the Lowcountry and two other Southeast cities like a pendulum.

It stoked a fever in each location that upped the bidding of public money incentives to draw the plant, and the company used the proposed "Blue Bell" project as leverage to pry labor concessions at an existing plant. The attempt to lure a Boeing 787 jetliner production line to the Charleston area resembles that fever.

Business and political leaders say Boeing's purchase of the Vought Aircraft Industries plant in North Charleston might signal an eventual move of a full-scale 787 assembly plant to the Vought site near Charleston International Airport.

The corporate situation at Boeing now mirrors DaimlerChrysler then. The company is negotiating hard for a no-strike agreement with its union in Seattle, hoping to get the derailed production of its 787 airliner back on line before it loses many more potential customers. DaimlerChrysler, too, was struggling in 2002.

But analysts say there's more to it than that.

Boeing "has certainly done that before," said Richard Aboulafia, Teal Group aviation analyst, about using the prospect of moving as leverage against a union. But when the company tried it last year, the union went on strike anyway.

It's pretty unlikely Boeing will build a proposed second production line in Everett, Wash., where the current line is located, because of the high cost and the history of labor troubles there, he said.

But whether it will move comes down to "cost, cost, cost," said Scott Hamilton, a Leeham Co. aviation consultant based in Washington state. "It's cheaper to produce things in Southern states than it is to produce in Washington."

The Everett plant's union "is militant and strikes Boeing at the drop of a hat."

College of Charleston economist Frank Hefner said he doesn't think Boeing is going to relocate its whole operation to Charleston. "But they might relocate parts of the assembly process to Charleston. They're looking at shipping costs versus other costs."

The Sprinter van plant was never built. A year after awarding the project to a site near Savannah, the company backed out of it.

The Charleston region, though, ended up a winner. DaimlerChrysler, now Daimler AG, eventually located some smaller manufacturing operations here.

If Boeing can wrestle through its labor problems, it has four or five years before it must decide on building a plant, Aboulafia said.

Unlike the hotly competitive situation DaimlerChrysler found itself in, "you've got the luxury of time to think about it."

Reach Bo Petersen at bpetersen@postandcourier.com or 937-5744.