‘Raucous Rallying, Marching, Chanting at Every Work Break Inside All Local Boeing Plants Since Sunday’

By Geoff Mirelowitz

SEATTLE, September 12, 2024 — Members of International Association of Machinists (IAM) District 751, representing over 33,000 workers, voted by a stunning margin today to reject a new contract proposed by the Boeing Company and endorsed by the union’s top officials.

“About 94.6% voted to reject the contract and 96% voted to strike, more than the two-thirds majority required by union rules to authorize a walkout,” reported The Seattle Times.

The strike began at 12:01 am on September 13.

Below we are reposting a Seattle Times article, written prior to the vote and published on September 12, because it features the comments of several workers who explain why they need and deserve more than what Boeing offered.

This is the first Boeing strike in 16 years. Following the 2008 walkout the contract was later “reopened” at the company’s initiative. Changes to the agreement dealt new blows to IAM members.

Most notably, in 2014, Boeing ended the long-standing fixed-payment pension plan for new hires and capped the years of eligibility and payments for those who retained pension rights. The new replacement plan consisted of modest company payments into an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) for each employee.

That proposal was first rejected and barely survived a second membership vote with a 51% majority. Local union officials opposed the deal on the second vote. That vote was imposed on District 751 by top officials of the IAM international union.

Boeing bred divisions in the union membership then with its threat to build its next airplane model outside of the Seattle-Everett area. Many of the more recently hired workers at that time feared massive layoffs if Boeing made good on that threat.

The mood among Boeing workers is quite different today as the comments in the article below indicate. Boeing’s stubborn insistence on retaining that retirement setup, and its refusal to significantly increase its contributions to the IRAs, sparked anger. While the new proposed contract would increase those payments, the company proposal ended an annual bonus workers have received for many years. In the past three years, that bonus has paid out between 3.7% and 5.8% of total annual wages including overtime. So, in total, workers would not truly gain anything.

As the article below explains:

It’s true that a guaranteed general wage increase that compounds each year is more valuable than a one-time bonus that varies in value from one year to the next.

Still, machinists look at the loss of a bonus of say around 4% in each of the four years of the contract as 16% of the 25% that is not new money.

Boeing contends an additional $4,160 per year that the contract offer would put in a union 401(k) plan is to compensate for the loss of the bonus. 

But again, there’s a disconnect with how the machinists perceive it. They had universally expected a big bump in their 401(k) plan as minimal compensation for having been forced to give up their traditional pensions in 2014 — not as a substitute for a new loss, the bonus.

The vote and the commitment of the union ranks to fight for a better contract is the latest evidence of growing worker militancy. In late 2023, four of the nation’s rail unions — representing over half of the rail workforce — also rejected a proposed national agreement.

In 2021, United Auto Workers (UAW) members at John Deere struck the agricultural machinery giant, for the first time in three decades, and rejected two company proposals brought to them by union officials before they won a better contract.

In 2023 the threat of a nationwide strike by Teamsters at United Parcel Service (UPS) resulted in a new contract acceptable to the majority of the membership. Later in 2023, the UAW conducted a successful strike against the “Big Three” U.S. auto makers. There are other indications of the same fighting spirit spreading within the working class.

The strike by IAM members at Boeing deserves the active solidarity of the entire labor movement and the support of all working people.

The article below is taken from the original. World-Outlook re-publishes it for the information of our readers.

Geoff Mirelowitz was an active trade unionist for more than 30 years, including 17 years as a member of SMART Local 845 in Seattle while working on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad.

Vote by Boeing machinists likely to trigger an immediate strike

Sep. 11, 2024, at 7:49 pm

By Dominic Gates and Lauren Rosenblatt

Seattle Times staff reporters

Boeing machinists will vote throughout the day Thursday [September 12] on the company’s contract offer, and a massive mandate to strike seems all but inevitable. 

Josh Hajek, a five-year Boeing employee in Renton, said union members were shocked, upset and in disbelief at the tentative agreement reached Sunday between union leaders and Boeing management. 

Since then, workers in Renton have been “fired up,” he said.

Every hour, on the hour, union members there rally with horns, sirens and whistles for at least five minutes. They’ve gathered outside the office of 737 general manager Katherine Ringgold. They’ve discussed the proposed contract ad nauseam and largely determined that it falls short.

The raucous rallying, marching and chanting at every work break has been replicated inside all the local Boeing plants since Sunday.

On Wednesday, Hajek said he’s prepared to stay on the picket line “as long as it takes to get the contract that we deserve.” 

Even Jon Holden, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751, who negotiated Sunday’s deal and recommended his members accept it, now concedes that the contract offer “will be voted down, and our members will vote to strike.”

After voting concludes, the result will be announced Thursday evening at the union’s South Park headquarters. If the vote goes as expected, a strike will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday, and Boeing’s manufacturing operations will grind to a halt.

Union pickets will be posted at factory gates for the duration of the strike. 

Boeing has told mechanics in its parts plant in Auburn not to start any jobs that cannot be completed before the strike deadline.

New Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, who has spoken with employees in Renton and Everett in the past few days, sent a message to machinists Wednesday in a last-ditch plea to avert a strike that he said “would put our shared recovery in jeopardy.”

His message acknowledged that bitterness left over from the last contract 10 years ago — when Boeing threatened to build the 777X somewhere else and forced the union to give up its traditional pension — plays into the widespread disdain for Sunday’s contract proposal.

“I know the reaction to our tentative agreement with the IAM has been passionate. I understand and respect that passion,” Ortberg wrote. “But I ask you not to sacrifice the opportunity to secure our future together because of the frustrations of the past.”

“It’s no secret that our business is in a difficult period, in part due to our own mistakes in the past,” he went on. 

He said delays to airplane deliveries caused by a strike would further erode airline trust in Boeing and hurt “our ability to determine our future together.”

Jake Reis, an Everett machinist for 13 years, said he cannot accept Ortberg’s argument.

“Why are we being asked to sacrifice for management’s mistakes, their poor decisions?” he asked, adding that he’s been saving money to prepare for a strike and expects a better contract eventually.

Boeing is in trouble, he conceded, but it’s also “too big to fail, and there will always be bailouts for Boeing.”

Still, the passionate rejection is not unanimous.

Another Everett worker — who, like the others who spoke anonymously for this article, asked to remain anonymous to protect his job — said in an interview Sunday that although the offer from Boeing didn’t go far enough, he’d vote to ratify the deal.

“I think they could have given us more,” he said. “But I also know that what we have, it’s a huge deal.” 

A regional impact

The impact of a strike will hit not only Boeing but the many small aerospace companies that supply the jet-maker and all the businesses from restaurants to flower shops frequented by machinists.

In Snohomish County, where about half of the 33,000 machinists live, County Executive Dave Somers in a statement Wednesday described this moment as “a pivotal time” in Boeing’s history.

“Decisions made in the months to come will significantly impact its future. The outcome will unquestionably also help to shape our own,” Somers wrote. “Any strike would be hard on workers, families, the company, our communities, and our region’s economy.”

While the loss of Boeing paychecks will be a heavy hit to some union families, many machinists speaking to The Seattle Times expressed confidence in their ability to survive during a strike.

On social media, some said they plan to take other jobs temporarily, including gig economy work such as DoorDash or Uber. Others said they have second jobs already or have work lined up. Like Reis, many longtime employees have saved in anticipation of a strike.

Deceptive advertising?

A grade 9 machinist at the top of the pay scale currently earns just over $100,000 a year without overtime. But a low-level grade 3 new hire earns only $20 an hour, about $41,600 a year and less than some retail jobs.

The wage increases in Boeing’s offer would raise the grade 9 machinist wage to $130,000 in four years. The entry-level grade 3 mechanic wage would rise to $23 an hour immediately and to just over $30 an hour, or $62,400 annually, in four years. 

While those increases look handsome, the dissenting machinists view the supposed 25% general wage increase over four years as deceptive advertising. 

That’s because Boeing at the same time took away the machinists’ annual bonuses. In the past three years, that bonus has paid out between 3.7% and 5.8% of total annual wages including overtime.

It’s true that a guaranteed general wage increase that compounds each year is more valuable than a one-time bonus that varies in value from one year to the next.

Still, machinists look at the loss of a bonus of say around 4% in each of the four years of the contract as 16% of the 25% that is not new money.

Boeing contends an additional $4,160 per year that the contract offer would put in a union 401(k) plan is to compensate for the loss of the bonus. 

But again, there’s a disconnect with how the machinists perceive it. They had universally expected a big bump in their 401(k) plan as minimal compensation for having been forced to give up their traditional pensions in 2014 — not as a substitute for a new loss, the bonus. 

Krystal Keefe, a six-year Boeing mechanic who works on the stored 737 airplanes at Moses Lake, was relocated to Renton this week to try to get some work completed before any strike.

Keefe said the extra 401(k) money, unlike the bonus, is not immediate cash, which some families need. And she called Boeing advertising the offer as a 25% raise just “a talking point for the public.”

“Our wage is not really going up 25%,” said Keefe. “A lot of people are upset about that.” 

A 14-year Everett mechanic said that everyone has read the contract and concluded that “Boeing added very little.”

“All they really did was take money from one place in the existing contract and move it to another place in the new contract to give the illusion that they are offering more,” he said. “It’s just another Boeing shell game.”

Union rift

The backlash against the union recommending acceptance of Boeing’s offer has created a deep rift between union officials and some rank-and-file members. 

Part of the reaction against Holden personally is based on a misreading of a letter of understanding in the proposed contract. 

The union in its summary of that letter referred to it as providing “employee representation on the board of directors.” This was a stretch.

The union had asked in the negotiations for a seat on the board, which Boeing turned down. 

Instead, the letter simply commits to an annual meeting between the union’s leaders and Boeing’s board to discuss safety issues.

But machinists reading that union summary jumped to the conclusion Holden was getting a board seat, with the travel and financial perks that go with that. It’s not true, but many spread the rumor that he had sold out his members for money.

One union member said via email that after the strike and final agreement of a contract, he will organize a vote of no confidence in Holden and the union leadership and has already set up a website for that effort.

“A lot of us feel betrayed,” he wrote. Boeing has “never treated us fair and it has eroded our bargaining power by backing us into the corner one too many times.”

Preparing for a long fight

But that internal fight is for later. For now, the union members look set to square up against Boeing.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stephanie Pope told employees in a message Tuesday that management gave all it could in the negotiations, and “we did not hold back with an eye on a second vote.”

A young mechanic, son of a current veteran machinist, who joined Boeing a year ago and works to refurbish the stored 777X jets on Paine Field in Everett, said Pope is “out of touch.”

“We know they can do better,” he said.

Hajek, the five-year Renton mechanic, said he realizes a strike will be a financial hardship for some members, even though the union will offer some resources to help. 

Starting on the third week of a strike, the union will provide $250 a week in strike pay to each member. 

Hajek is nervous and excited for the vote.

“We work hard, we work long hours, we’re in a job where we are pressured by management to meet deadlines,” he said. “We wear our bodies out, we beat ourselves up for the job.”

“If it’s 30 days and we get the right contract, so be it,” Hajek said. “If it’s 60 days, so be it.”

Keefe, the Moses Lake mechanic temporarily seconded to Renton, saw CEO Ortberg walking around the factory Wednesday. She understands his comment about the risk to the company from a strike and concedes that if it happens, “nobody wins.”

“A strike is going to hurt Boeing. That’s a guarantee,” she said. “The company needs to understand the amount of money it will lose without those 33,000 workers. That loss is more than if they just agreed a better contract.”

If you appreciate this article, subscribe to World-Outlook (for free) by clicking on the link below.

Type your email in the box below and click on “SUBSCRIBE.” You will receive a notification in your in-box on which you will have to click to confirm your subscription.