L.A. Officials Urge Boeing to Hire Local Workers

The Los Angeles City Council and the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday called on the Boeing Co. to hire local workers for B-2 Stealth bomber jobs in Palmdale instead of importing about 450 employees from Seattle.

In separate unanimous decisions, the two governing bodies asserted that the Los Angeles area has a large pool of qualified and available aerospace workers, so the Seattle-based company need not maintain its $10 million-a-year, government-funded practice of temporarily relocating its employees.

The two votes added to criticism of the program--in which Boeing pays $25,000 to $50,000 per employee in annual per diem expenses in addition to salaries--already voiced by several elected officials.

In a response issued Tuesday, Boeing Executive Vice President Jerry King reiterated the company’s claim that it has been unable to find enough qualified workers locally. King called the relocations “neither an example of poor management nor fiscal extravagance.”