Image of the week: Boeing stalemate
The “No pension!! No planes!” strike placard outside a Boeing production facility in Everett, Washington state, not only illustrates the distance between the company’s management and its 33,000 US workers, it also encapsulates the decline of once-prized manufacturing jobs.
For the past three weeks, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) has been striking in pursuit of a 40 per cent pay increase and the return of Boeing’s defined-benefit pension scheme, which closed down a decade ago after a wave of similar such closures across the United States and other western economies.
The much-troubled Boeing offered a 30 per cent pay rise plus improvements to its existing retirement benefits that would unsurprisingly fall far short of the traditional pension scheme sought. On Wednesday it then withdrew that offer after talks broke down.
Such pension schemes notably don’t tend to make a miraculous comeback. What the calls for its return highlights more than anything else is the extent to which working for Boeing – now barely a means to an end for many workers – was once both a coveted employment path and source of regional pride. Who wouldn’t want to turn back the clock?
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In numbers: Vistry bungle
€137 million
Amount in euro that UK home builder Vistry said would drain from its expected profits over the next three years after it admitted it got its sums wrong on build costs.
Nine
Number of housing developments in England where Vistry said it had underestimated the cost of completion, prompting the profit warning.
£1 billion
Value wiped off Vistry’s share price on Tuesday after investors failed to be reassured by the company’s insistence that it has definitely got its maths rights on its other 290-plus developments. Honest.
Getting to know: Nobu Hotels
Some readers may know that Nobu’s hotels, set in the world’s most captivating destinations, are the height of distinctive charm and individualistic spirit, providing an iconic hospitality experience replete with the luxuries of discovery and connection. That’s how the chain – cofounded by Robert De Niro – describes itself anyway. For one of Coleen Rooney’s lawyers in the Wagatha Christie trial, however, Nobu was merely the emergency backup option.
Rebekah Vardy – who notoriously lost the libel case she took against Rooney, leaving her liable to 90 per cent of Rooney’s legal costs – this week failed in her claim that the £1.8 million (€2.1 million) bill had initially been “deliberately” understated. “Extraordinary” costs such as Rooney’s lawyer staying at the five-star Nobu were cited.
The court heard this week, however, that the lawyer in question originally booked into a “modest” hotel only to discover it had no working wifi or working shower. After this traumatic experience, his luck changed for the better, with Rooney’s agent able to secure him a reduced room rate at Nobu.
The list: Google vs US government
The US government is “considering behavioural and structural remedies” that will end Google’s monopoly in online search. In other words, it wants to put manners on the Alphabet-owned search giant. So how might it go about doing this?
1. Forced divestments: The US department of justice could ask a judge to force Google to sell off its Chrome web browser and/or its Android operating system. This would “break them”, said Google vice-president of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland. It might also raise the cost of Android devices, Google claimed.
2. Results sharing: Washington could require Google to share users’ search data with rivals. This poses risks to the privacy and security of users, Mulholland said.
3. Data regulations: The department could effectively “prohibit Google from using or retraining data that cannot be effectively shared with others on the basis of privacy concerns,” according to the department’s filing.
4. New oversight: It could force the company to report to a “court-appointed technical committee” that it would also be obliged to finance.
5. AI restrictions: Washington could place restrictions on Google’s ability to use search results to train new generative artificial intelligence (AI) models and products. This, Google suggested, would be akin to “holding back American innovation”.
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