Boeing Strike

I mentioned the other day that Boeing and the Machinists had come to a deal. Well, a deal requires the membership ratifying the contract that the members very much did not do that.

Blue-collar workers from Boeing walked picket lines in the Pacific Northwest instead of building airplanes on Friday after they overwhelmingly rejected a proposed contract that would have raised their wages by 25% over four years.

The strike by 33,000 machinists will not disrupt airline flights anytime soon, but it is expected to shut down production of Boeing’s best-selling jetliners, marking yet another setback for a company already dealing with billions of dollars in financial losses and a damaged reputation.

The company said it was taking steps to conserve cash while its CEO looks for ways to come up with a contract that the unionized factory workers will accept.

…

Many of the workers who spoke to reporters said they considered the wage offer inadequate given how much the cost of living has increase in the Pacific Northwest. John Olson said his pay had increased just 2% during his six years at Boeing.

“The last contract we negotiated was 16 years ago, and the company is basing the wage increases off of wages from 16 years ago,” the 45-year-old toolmaker said. “They don’t even keep up with the cost of inflation.”

Others said they were unhappy about the company’s decision to change the criteria used to calculate annual bonuses.

The machinists make $75,608 per year on average, not counting overtime, and that would have risen to $106,350 by the end of the proposed four-year contract, according to Boeing.

This is the point worth making–it was SIXTEEN YEARS since Boeing would get serious about working out a contract. These workers are pissed. They know that their employers are why the planes are falling apart in the sky. How much better a second deal will be, I don’t know, but this is an interesting thing to watch because this is very real fury coming from the workers.

Many striking Boeing workers told The Washington Post they would not settle until Boeing offered a deal with wage gains closer to the 40 percent over four years requested by the union — up from the 25 percent offered. They also told The Post they had been saving up to go on strike for months and even years.

“If we have any power to show the world that Boeing is continuing to make bad decisions, it would be now,” said Alex Mutch, a quality inspector at Boeing’s 737 Max storage facility in Victorville, Calif. He has worked there for five years and said his family has given up movies and dining out because wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living.

Part of the opportunism is because Boeing machinists have been working under the same contract since 2008, and they gave up major concessions, including their pensions, in intervening years to keep airplane production in Washington state.

At the same time, the embattled aerospace giant is in a particularly vulnerable state and can’t afford to lose what could be as much as $1 billion a week in production. And two rating agencies reported they are considering downgrading Boeing’s credit.