At the risk of further thread drift - yes Boeing embraced going to a delegated authority in the aftermath of the strike, but it wasn't their idea - it came from DC. After watching in horror as the engineer strike effectively shut down the commercial aircraft side of the company down (zero deliveries during the strike), they naively believed moving to a delegated authority would make aircraft deliveries less dependent on engineering (which was laughably wrong)
Yep that is partly or mostly correct- but there is/was more. In 2001, Boeing hired Rudy de leon ( look him up ) - purpose was to push for a 767 Tanker contract- 767 had been mil spec certifiec re airframe. ßpeea meanwhile was pushing for a GATT-WTO countervailing duties issue against Airbus. Then came 911- 767 was on last legs- and commercial was taking a hit. Then came the Sears and Dryun fiasco- mostly as a result of the MDC crew involvement. Pressure was applied to the unions, and in the process the CVD ( countervailing duties ) issue was dropped- spiked , the chart boys came to prominence- and the long time Boeing lobbyhist who had a great sense of ethics bailed- a new MDC brand lobbying group came into being-Rudy slowly faded into the woodwork having spiked the CVD- later to be resurrected as the WTO-Airbus subsidy issue . - and the lobbying group was able to apply pressure to the DC types- unfortunately, the rest is obvious, history, and public. Enough of the thread drift- I'm just trying to fill in a few not so obvious blanks as to how Boeing lost its way.