Airbus's US move highlights redefinition of globalisation Last year, Boeing triggered one of the biggest labour disputes in recent US history when it opened a plant in South Carolina, a work-to-right state, which the company's unionised labour force at its Seattle base believed it was doing to drive down wages across the company. While welcoming Airbus's decision to build the plant in the US, Paul Shearon, head of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, questioned why "a company that has been as successful as Airbus with a fully unionised workforce is choosing to go to a 'right-to-work' state to build that plant?." The management of Airbus will have expected the understandable concern, but are betting that the gamble will ultimately benefit the company. John Leahy, the chief salesman at Airbus, said of the plant: "I think we have become American with this." With political clout in Congress becoming ever more valuable as the US defence budget shrinks, Leahy will be hoping that his sound bite resonates across Washington. Amid Britain's intense focus on the behaviour and purpose of the banking sector, Howard Wheeldon, a policy director and defence expert at ADS Group, says that the move by Airbus is also a reminder that the more than 30-year-old process of globalisation did not end with the financial crisis. "We live in a world in which globalisation didn't die in 2008," he explains. While that is true, this week's move by Airbus hints at some of the nuances that have emerged in globalisation since the crisis. The planes that will be assembled in Alabama are not going to be shipped outside America because the customers are all US airlines. Although Airbus still needs to get the various parts for the A320s from Europe to the US, having an assembly plant in the country at least diminishes some of the currency risk and transportation cost of being a global company. Earlier this year, the manufacturer Caterpillar moved a factory from Japan to the US state of Georgia for the same reason - the mini tractors it was making were all destined for customers in America. With the price of oil expected to remain on an upward path and the future of the euro still uncertain, it is little wonder that companies are redefining what it means to be global. The warmest American reaction to Airbus's move came from those who took it as further evidence that the country's manufacturing is beginning to reverse decades of painful job losses. With the official US unemployment rate still at 8.2pc, the addition of even a thousand jobs cannot be sniffed at. But if manufacturers are ultimately going to bring more jobs to countries such as the US and Britain, they need a combination of a highly-skilled workforce and strong demand in those countries. The aerospace industry has already complained that the highly-skilled engineers it requires are not available in the numbers it would like in the US. And this week's latest forecast from Boeing for the size of the commercial aircraft market gave reasons why a wave of aerospace jobs will not be coming to the US, despite the move by Airbus. Although Boeing lifted its prediction for the overall size of the market in 20 years from $4 trillion to $4.5 trillion (£2.9 trillion), it said that the growth will be driven by countries such as India and China. That provides powerful incentives for the likes of Boeing and Airbus to focus their efforts on opening more plants in those countries. If the plant in the port of Mobile is going to be repeated, America needs to work harder on the immediate recovery as well the longer-term challenge of its skill base.