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On the subject of constructing planes, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun is all about streamlining prices. An accountant by coaching, Calhoun has prioritized fiscal self-discipline over his 4 years on the helm, tightening the belt to unencumber money move and put the corporate on higher monetary footing.
However on the subject of residing the CEO way of life, that thriftiness goes proper out the window.
See right here: Boeing reported in a regulatory submitting that 4 high executives, together with Calhoun, obtained an additional half-million {dollars} price of private non-public jet journey on the corporate’s dime that had beforehand been improperly recorded as enterprise journey, my colleague Chris Isidore writes.
That oopsie was found in an inner evaluate, which was prompted by a Wall Street Journal investigation final yr into Boeing executives’ non-public jet journey, the paper reported Thursday.
To be clear: Boeing requires Calhoun, who’s stepping down later this yr, to make use of its non-public jets for enterprise and private journey for safety causes. And that’s fairly customary.
If he’s flying from the corporate’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, to its manufacturing facility outdoors Seattle, that’s typically thought-about a perk of the job. However when a CEO makes use of the corporate jet for a household trip, that often counts as taxable revenue.
The IRS is a stickler about these items, and it not too long ago introduced it will be cracking down on executives who’ve been illegally writing off private journeys as enterprise bills. There isn’t any proof anybody from Boeing was doing that, however the crackdown indicators that it’s occurring with some regularity in Company America.
Over the past three years, Calhoun racked up $979,000 in private air journey, in accordance with the corporate. Boeing didn’t have any remark past the data within the submitting.
In all of the chatter about Boeing’s disastrous begin to 2024, we’ve barely had time to speak concerning the disaster looming on the horizon: a possible strike by its largest labor union.
A ten-year contract overlaying 30,000 Seattle-area machinists expires September 12. Negotiations began final month — delayed to provide the corporate some slack whereas coping with a number of federal probes into the January 5 door-plug blowout.
The machinists are in search of a 40% pay bump over three years and a seat on the board of administrators.
It’s going to be fairly awkward for Boeing management to attempt to nickel and dime the individuals who construct the planes whereas lavishing Calhoun with a virtually $33 million payday final yr (a forty five% bump from 2022), and teeing up his $45 million retirement bundle, and batting down questions concerning the boss bouncing between his two houses, neither of that are positioned close to the corporate’s headquarters.
“With what’s occurring as of late, we’re oftentimes the final line of protection, and we have now to avoid wasting this firm from itself,” the union’s president, Jon Holden, told the FT final week.