Business in brief: Boeing profits bring bonuses
Boeing Co.’s rising profits have brought an extra payday for thousands of the company’s Puget Sound-area workers, but not those who assemble its airplanes.
Some 45,000 employees in the region will get a bonus equivalent to 12 days’ extra pay, the company said. The $170 million regional payout was determined by how well Boeing performed against financial targets during 2006.
“This was an important year for Boeing, one in which we turned a corner and positioned ourselves for what we believe will be a very promising future,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jim McNerney said.
The bonuses are part of a companywide incentive package affecting about 113,000 workers, Boeing spokesman Tim Neal told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for a story published Friday. Eligible workers will get an average bonus of nearly $4,000 in their paychecks at the end of February.
Coeur d’Alene
Mountain West earnings up 19%
Mountain West Bank, which opened four branches last year, reported record earnings for 2006.
The bank reported earnings of $13.64 million last year, up nearly 19 percent from 2005.
During the fourth quarter of 2006, Mountain West had earnings of $4.2 million, a 48 percent gain compared with the fourth quarter of 2005.
Mountain West Bank is headquartered in Coeur d’Alene, with 22 branches operating in Idaho, Washington, and Utah. The bank has more than 300 employees.
New York
Hewlett-Packard quitting Nasdaq
Hewlett-Packard Co., one of a batch of New York Stock Exchange-listed companies that three years ago were persuaded to try a “dual listing” on the Nasdaq Stock Market, has decided to abandon the program and leave Nasdaq.
The Palo Alto, Calif., company said it would remain listed on the NYSE, where its shares have traded since 1961.
As a big technology company, HP may have seemed like a good fit at Nasdaq. In a statement, the company said it was withdrawing from Nasdaq because of exchange-listing fees and the administrative burden.
York , Pa.
Harley-Davidson workers strike
The assembly line at Harley-Davidson’s largest manufacturing plant remained idle Friday as nearly 2,800 union workers walked off the job, saying they would strike for as long as it took to win a better contract.
Small groups of workers began quietly picketing each entrance of the York facility after midnight, two days after the union overwhelmingly voted down the company’s contract proposal.
“There’s no sense in doing this if we’re not going to stick together,” said Nevin Bechtel, 59, who works in the painting department. “If we regress now, we’ve lost everything we’re struggling for, and the company will think they’ve won.”
The company installed cement barricades to block access to all gates, even empty parking lots, Boger said.