Class associations accuse U.S.-based aircraft company of threatening national sovereignty
11/23/2022
Boeing’s offensive to recruit engineers from the elite of Brazil’s aerospace and defense industry has ended up in court. Two trade associations have filed a lawsuit to try and stop the U.S.-based plane maker from hiring “highly-skilled engineers” that are currently working in strategic companies of the country’s Defense Industrial Base (BID).
In one year, Boeing has taken more than 200 engineers from other companies to its center, in the most acute movement of brain drain that this industry has ever experienced, according to estimates by representatives of the Brazilian Association of Defense and Security Materials Industries (Abimde) and the Aerospace Industries Association of Brazil (Aiab).
In the suit filed Tuesday in the 3rd Federal Court of São José dos Campos, the trade groups warn that the U.S.-based company’s move puts the survival of companies in the sector at risk and threatens national sovereignty. The goal of the suit is to stop the “systematic hiring that leaves a trail of predatory actions in the companies of the BID, until alternatives are discussed that can guarantee the preservation of national sovereignty.”
With the move, the intention is also to bring the American company to the center of the debate, as well as the Ministry of Defense and the Federal Attorney General’s Office (AGU). “These are hundreds of engineers, but the core of the issue is not quantitative. It is qualitative. That is the difference with other brain drain processes,” said Aiab head Julio Shidara.
“Aiab defends free competition and the free market. But such principles are not absolute. They must be subject to constitutional imperatives such as national sovereignty,” he added.
So far, 10 of the most important companies in the defense sector have had engineers “co-opted” by Boeing, and some have lost about 70% of their staff in specific areas essential to the business, according to the associations.
In Embraer’s case, the situation would be more worrisome given the access that Boeing had to “proprietary information” during the negotiation period for the purchase of the Brazilian manufacturer’s commercial aircraft, which did not move forward. Embraer and Boeing have taken the conflict to arbitration and there is no outcome yet.
In the associations’ view, Boeing’s move unbalances the market and represents a threat because the companies that make up the BID “aim to constantly update the Navy, Air Force, and Army technologies.” “The companies that are being harassed are the ones that provide technology that maintains the defense capability of the Armed Forces,” they said.
Boeing declined to comment.
*By Stella Fontes — São Paulo
Source: Valor International