Machinists demand Boeing hire more

CHICAGO, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Striking machinists at Boeing have asked the company to hire more workers, a demand seen as risky for the modern business era, industry analysts said.

"You don't want to lock yourself into a contract where you're paying out a lot of money in a slowdown," Richard Tortoriello, an equity analyst with Standard & Poor's, told The New York Times.

But, the strike differs from walkouts at automobile plants, as Boeing earned a record $4.1 billion in 2007 and has a backlog of orders that some consider safe from any strike-related fallout, the Times reported Wednesday.

"No one's going to change their fleets from Boeing to Airbus over something that's going to be resolved within a few months," said Doug McVitie, a managing director at Arran Aerospace, a French consulting firm.

Boeing, however, faces competition from companies in Europe, Canada, Brazil, China and the United States. As such, Boeing, which trimmed its workforce from 50,000 machinists to less than 19,000 after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, wants the right to make its own hiring decisions.

"We can't stand still," company spokesman Tim Healy said. "We've got strong competition. We've got emerging competition," he said.