Boeing Strike Ended

There are other things going on in the world and one of them is the end of the Boeing strike last week. Of course who knows if this means anything given what is about to come for organized labor, as the excellent labor scholar Jake Rosenfeld explores

Striking Boeing machinists approved a new contract on Nov. 4, 2024. It was negotiated between their union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and the nation’s largest commercial aircraft manufacturer.

Members of the union, known as the IAM, won a 43% cumulative wage raise over the next four years, substantial signing bonuses, increased company contributions to workers’ 401k plans and a commitment by Boeing to build its next plane in the Seattle region.

The workers had rejected two previous proposals, demanding higher pay, job security and the return of a traditional pension plan before backing the third on the eve of Election Day.

Nearly 60% of the roughly 33,000 workers accepted the contract, ending a strike that had dragged on for nearly seven weeks, idling plane production and contributing to Boeing’s more than US$6 billion in losses in the past three months.

Boeing says its machinists will earn an average of $119,309 per year with this new contract, up from of $75,608 annually.

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I also see two big differences between those earlier contracts and what the workers agreed to this time. First, the Boeing strike was more contentious.

By rejecting two prior contract agreements, workers expressed anger and impatience not only at Boeing executives but at their own union. In September, the IAM presented its members with a proposal the union described as “the best contract we’ve negotiated in our history.” But 95% of the union’s members disagreed, rejecting the agreement, and 96% subsequently voted to authorize a strike.

It’s rare for union members to overwhelmingly rebuff their leadership that way. And yet it happened again a month later. In late October, workers turned down another proposal agreed to by the IAM and Boeing representatives, although by a smaller margin.

A key sticking point in the prior rounds of negotiation highlights the second distinguishing factor of the machinists’ strike. In 2013, the company demanded workers relinquish their defined-benefit pensions.

Because the company threatened to shift production of a then-new airplane away from the Seattle region if workers didn’t ratify the change, the rank and file reluctantly agreed to the proposal. They approved that contract by a narrow margin in January 2014.

But also remember that union voters were almost the only group of voters who did not swing toward Trump. Unions as a whole always do the right thing, despite lies about them from liberals who should know better.