Boeing’s new 787 assembly facility in North Charleston, S.C., will employ only a fraction of the company’s workforce, but the southern state’s anti-union climate could make it an attractive location for future Boeing projects.

Boeing announced Wednesday that it will build a second 787 line at a fuselage facility it purchased this summer in North Charleston, passing over its current widebody plant in Everett, Wash. (Daily, Oct. 29). A key factor in the decision was the company’s prickly relationship with its Seattle-area union workers, who went on strike a year ago.

Strikes are not likely to be a big problem in South Carolina, which has used its position as a right-to-work state to lure other major industrial projects such as a BMW auto plant. “Our state has the lowest unionization of any state in the country,” says David Ginn, president and CEO of the Charleston Regional Development Alliance, an economic development organization.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), which represents Boeing employees, blasted Boeing, saying the company had never seriously considered opening the new 787 line in Everett. “Corporate decisions like this are years in the making, and this one is no different,” says IAM President Tom Buffenbarger.

An economic development package approved by the South Carolina legislature on Wednesday assumes the project will create at least 3,800 jobs and $750 million in investment within seven years. But the IAM claims that is “more than three times as many jobs” as Boeing needs for a second 787 line — raising the question of whether the company intends to locate other aircraft work in South Carolina in the future.

Greg Foster, a spokesman for South Carolina House Speaker Bobby Harrell, says the 3,800-job figure was agreed to by Boeing. “We had several rounds of negotiations and this is a number that Boeing felt comfortable they could reach,” he says. A Boeing spokeswoman says the company expects to create “several thousand” new jobs in South Carolina but declined to elaborate.

South Carolina’s incentive package includes $170 million in bonds plus tax exemptions. One state lawmaker valued the total package at $450 million.

Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group, says the number of jobs called for in the incentive plan seems large for only the 787 line. “That number is grossly disproportionate,” he says. “It either implies a commitment to keep going with next-generation aircraft in South Carolina, or there are loopholes” that would permit Boeing to deliver ewer jobs.

Ginn says the 787 line is expected to generate $2 billion in economic impact in the 650,000-person Charleston region by 2017. “Our hope is they will continue to grow here,” he says.

Photo: Darren Shannon