Boeing plans to invest $1 billion in S. Carolina

Boeing has told South Carolina legislators it plans to invest $1 billion and hire at least 2,000 more workers in South Carolina by 2020.

The company made those promises this week as the South Carolina Legislature began deliberations on a bill to give Boeing $120 million in upfront aid to expand its facilities there.

Boeing already has invested more than $1 billion in its site near the Charleston Airport where it assembles 787 Dreamliners and builds major components for those composite-bodied planes.

The company in 2009 rejected a plan that would have expanded 787 production at its Everett plant and instead announced a plan to build its first new aircraft assembly plant outside of Washington state in North Charleston.

The company had already bought two factories at that site that other aerospace suppliers had built to create fuselage sections for the 787.

Boeing recently bought more than 300 acres near the plants in South Carolina and is negotiating to add a total of about 1,000 acres to its South Carolina footprint.

The company recently announced plans to move an information technology group from Washington to South Carolina.

The company has made no secret of its plans to build a parallel aircraft assembly infrastructure outside the Puget Sound area in part to break the grip of local unions that can shut down Boeing aircraft production with a strike.

Boeing’s South Carolina plants are not unionized, and South Carolina’s right to work laws make organizing more difficult.