More trouble for Boeing, this time not in the aeronautics or space sector, but in the union sector: workers at plants in the state of Washington have been demonstrating since midnight after rejecting a proposed agreement between the company and the IAM union. Boeing has reportedly raised wages and benefits, but not enough to meet demands, according to 96 percent of members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. – Iam District 751” voted to strike and 94.6 percent to reject the agreement. Boeing had proposed a 25 percent wage increase over four years instead of the 40 percent requested, a $3,000 bonus and a commitment to build the next commercial jet in the Seattle area if the program was launched within the four years of the agreement. Jon Holden, president of Iam District 751, said at the union hall in Seattle: “Boeing must stop breaking the law, must negotiate in good faith and we will come back to address the issues that our members feel are important.”
The issue is serious because the strike could prevent the recovery of the aerospace giant after the well-known events on safety and quality of production, costing the company, currently short of liquidity, about a billion dollars a week.also because the union’s members are overwhelmingly employed in assembling some of the company’s best-selling planes. The most direct impact is on Boeing’s Everett and Renton assembly plants, where a prolonged strike could also impact suppliers. Charles Fromog, a mechanic with 37 years of seniority, told The Washington Post: “We just want to be treated well and they’re not doing that, and last Sunday’s deal was not acceptable.” The text included improved health and retirement benefits, and if workers accepted it, Boeing would commit to building its next new plane in Washington state, fulfilling a key union demand. However, the inclusion of overtime and the four-year period would not make up for the lack of pay upgrades over the past 16 years, nor for cost-of-living increases, nor for rising health care costs at a time when inflation has greatly reduced workers’ purchasing power and quality of life. Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s administration has been monitoring the situation and has put Labor Secretary Julie Su in touch with both parties. Boeing executives spent much of the week trying to salvage the deal, urging IAM members to move past grievancesalso because the company has to deal with increases in the cost of raw materials and processing of up to 40%, which affect the final cost of aircraft making them less competitive. The new CEO of the company Kelly Ortberg, an engineer and former CEO of Rockwell Collins, urged workers to accept, telling them: “I hope you will choose the bright future that awaits you, working together we can get back on track, but a strike jeopardizes our shared recovery by further eroding trust in our customers and damaging our ability to determine our future together”. But workers rejected his call for solidarity and said they had not forgotten previous negotiations in which Boeing pushed for concessions, including the end of the traditional pension program, keeping airplane production in Everett, threatening to move production to other states, a statement that obviously added fuel to the fire. The last time IAM members went on strike was in 2008, when they stopped operations for 57 days, causing damages that the company estimated at about $1.5 billion a month. Boeing then reopened negotiations twice, in 2011 and 2013, obtaining important concessions from workers. According to the investment bank TD-Cowen, Today a 50-day strike could cost Boeing an estimated $3 to $3.5 billion, wiping out its cash flow. The average salary for a Boeing employee is about $46,000 a year (the minimum is just under $20 an hour), but consider that a house to rent in Everett, in the Seattle area, costs about 62% more than in the rest of the United States, coming in at $3,000 a month. And that the base salary for a manager is around $145,000 a year.
