> There've been a lot of things that our members do not feel good about in terms of the erosion of the jobs done by our union's members, declines in quality, declines in safety, so just a lot of mistrust.

What an excellent thing to go to the mat over. Quality and safety of the products the company produces.

A corporation is essentially a private dictatorship. The CEO is the dictator. The top executives are his minions. While you are at work, forget about your free speech rights. You must obey the CEO. That's what you are paid to do. Obey.

The problem with most dictatorships is that bad news doesn't flow to the top. Nobody wants to tell bad news to the dictator. Nobody wants to tell him an idea is completely stupid. Everyone praises him all the time. The system has no feedback mechanism. That's how most dictatorships fail. Everything works fine as the leadership gets progressively detached from reality. That's how Mao ended up killing 50 million people. That's how Vladimir Putin started the Ukraine war.

Airbus is a lot less hierarchical than Boeing. Management and unions may disagree, but they can have a coffee together. You just won't see that at Boeing. If Airbus employees notice something dangerous, they can just call executives. At Boeing, the CEO and his inner circle are very detached. The relationship between management and labor is much more ferocious. Bad news just doesn't reach them.

The Boeing 737 MAX crashes could not have happened at Airbus.

Boeing suffered from the curse of dictatorship.