Business briefs
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Boeing: It will take several weeks to resume production of planes
DALLAS | Boeing says it will be several weeks before it fully resumes building passenger planes, as factory workers return following a strike that lasted nearly two months.
A Boeing spokesperson said Tuesday that the delay in restarting plants in Washington state and Oregon is due to multiple steps needed to resume production.
Airline customers have grown increasingly upset over delays in getting new planes from Boeing — delays that started long before 33,000 machinists went on strike Sept. 13. Boeing’s schedule for gaining certification of new 737 Max models has also been pushed back.
Irish airline Ryanair still expects to get its first 737 Max 10s in the first half of 2027, but the CEO of American Airlines declined to predict Tuesday when his airline might see the largest version of the Max, which has not yet been certified by U.S. regulators.
“I can’t go run Boeing — it’s not my expertise, it’s not where I come from,” Robert Isom said. “Let’s just get one quality aircraft off the line first.”
After that, Boeing can worry about ramping up production of the Max and meeting airline delivery schedules, Isom told reporters outside an airline conference in Dallas.
Boeing workers represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace They faced a deadline of Tuesday to return to work after voting last week to accept a Boeing contract offer that will raise pay rates 38% over four years but won’t restore pensions that were frozen a decade ago.
The strike shut down production of the 737 Max and 777 passenger planes and a cargo-carrying version of the 767 plane. Boeing continued building 787s, which are produced by nonunion workers in South Carolina.
The strike cut deeply into the cash that Boeing receives when it delivers new planes.
Boeing said Tuesday that it delivered 14 planes in October including planes that were finished before the strike began. Boeing said it took orders for 63 planes, including 40 737 Max jets by leasing company Avia Solutions Group.
Canada moves to end port lockouts and orders binding arbitration
OTTAWA, Ontario | Canada’s labor minister said Tuesday he is intervening to end lockouts of workers at the country’s two biggest ports.
Labor Minister Steven Mackinnon said the negotiations have reached an impasse and he is directing the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order the resumption of all operations at the ports of Vancouver and Montreal and move the talks to binding arbitration.
Port of Montreal’s workers were locked out Sunday and workers in Vancouver on the Pacific Coast have been locked out since Nov. 4.
“There is a limit to the economic self destruction that Canadians are prepared to accept,” MacKinnon said. “In the face of economic self destruction there is an obligation to intervene. As minister of labor that responsibility falls to me.”
MacKinnon said $1.3 billion Canadian dollars ($930 million) of goods is affected every day. He said it was impacting supply chains, the economy and Canada’s reputation as reliable trading partner.
Business groups had been calling for government intervention to get the flow of goods moving again.
The move to end the stoppages comes after the government stepped in to end halted operations at Canada’s two main railways in August.
MacKinnon says he hopes operations can be restored in a matter of days.
The Maritime Employers Association locked out 1,200 longshore workers at the Port of Montreal on Sunday after workers voted to reject what employers called a final contract offer. The workers were seeking raises of 20% over four years.
The job action came after port workers in British Columbia were locked out amid a labor dispute involving more than 700 longshore supervisors, resulting in a paralysis of container cargo traffic at terminals on the West Coast.
Facebook and Instagram users in Europe can opt for less personalized ads
LONDON | Facebook and Instagram users in Europe will get the option to see less personalized ads if they don’t want to pay for an ad-free subscription, social media company Meta said Tuesday, bowing to pressure from Brussels over privacy and digital competition concerns.
Meta Platforms has been offering European Union an ad-free subscription option for about a year to comply with the continent’s strict data privacy rules, but regulators had accused the company of giving people a false choice.
The company said in a blog post that while people will still be able to choose between the subscription and existing free versions, it would also start giving free users an extra option over the coming weeks to see digital ads that are less personalized.
This means ads will be targeted at users based only on what they see during their current session on Facebook or Instagram going back no more than two hours, plus minimal personal information such as age, location, gender as well as how they engage with ads.
Data from all of a user’s previous time spent on Facebook or Instagram, which is typically combined to precisely target an individual with tailored ads, won’t be used.
“While this new choice is designed to give people an additional control over their data and ad experience, it may result in ads that are less relevant to a person’s interests,” Meta said in a blog post. “That means people will see ads that they don’t find as interesting. This drop in relevance is inevitable given that drastically reduced data is being used to show these less personalized ads to people.”
People who choose the new option will see ad breaks that can’t be skipped for a few seconds, Meta said.
European Union regulators had accused Meta of breaching the 27-nation bloc’s digital rules when it gave user the option to pay a monthly fee to avoid being targeted by ads based on their personal data.
The U.S. tech giant had rolled out the option after the European Union’s top court ruled Meta must first get consent before showing ads to users, in a decision that threatened its business model of tailoring ads based on individual users’ online interests and digital activity.
The company also said Tuesday it’s slashing monthly subscription prices for the ad-free option. Web users will pay 5.99 euros ($6.36), down from 9.99 euros previously, while iPhone and Android users will be charged 7.99 euros instead of 12.99 euros, which includes commissions charged by the Apple and Google mobile app stores.
Meta’s new subscription model could hit the company’s lucrative digital ad business in one of its biggest markets. The company said it has already factored the new offering into its most recent business outlook and financial guidance.
The options are available to users 18 and older in the EU’s 27 member countries, plus Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
—From AP reports
