by Samuel Messidor
The 33,000 striking Boeing workers voted down the latest tentative agreement Wednesday, with a 64% NO vote. This means the fight continues for the workers in Washington, where the majority of Boeing’s unionized production facilities are located.
The contract rejected by the rank-and-file Wednesday offered a 35% pay increase over the life of the agreement, still short of the 40% the union demanded, and, critically, did not reinstate the pensions stripped from the workers a decade ago. The workers, organized under the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers local 751 (IAM751), have been on strike against the aerospace and military monopoly since mid-September when they overwhelmingly rejected the first contract proposal from Boeing, which at the time was endorsed by the IAM bureaucracy as the best they could get short of a strike.
The union brass declined to endorse the latest tentative agreement (TA), unlike the previous TA, which had workers demonstrating for a NO vote with signs reading “Sell-out contract”. Pensions and pay are not the only issues: during IAM751 President Jon Holden’s Zoom presentation of the latest TA, a worker commented “This offer falls short, get rid of OT [overtime] and we need more time off”, while rank-and-file workers on social media say that the progression to top pay is too slow, leading to a lack of approval from new hires. The union brass had bragged that the latest TA reduced mandatory overtime, but the contract language allowed the company to override the reduction at will.
The White House had sent Labor Secretary Julie Su to settle the strike and get the workers back on the production line at the beleaguered monopoly, with Holden admitting that much of the latest TA was Su’s handiwork.
Boeing is reeling from scandal after scandal amid the general capitalist economic crisis, and has attempted to recoup its declining rate of profit by driving the workers at a frenzied pace while investing in new, non-union production facilities in the US South. It is hemorrhaging an estimated $4-5 billion a month from the strike, according to a Boeing executive, while the workers are getting by on $250 a week strike pay from the union bureaucracy.
image: Boeing workers rally and march while on strike in mid-October, workers’ social media
