Read our editorial on the significance of strikes here, and our opinion piece on combining the workers’ struggle and student struggle against Boeing here.
3,200 Boeing workers across the Midwest are no longer on strike after 68% of strikers voted to approve a new contract on November 13. The five-year contract includes a cumulative 24% wage increase and a $6,000 signing bonus..
Initiating the strike on August 4, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 837 membership rejected four proposals from Boeing over the course of the strike.
The workers assemble military jets and drones at Boeing factories in St. Louis and St. Charles, Missouri and Mascoutah, Illinois. The strike disrupted F-15 deliveries to the imperialist US Air Force and reduced production output across important sectors of Boeing.
The 24% wage increase is just shy of the cost-of-living increase over the past 5 years, with the Consumer Price Index’s inflation rate increasing 25% since November 2020. While the wage hike is posed as substantial by union bureaucracy and Boeing executives, it is a decrease in real wages.
The contract increased the signing bonus from $3,000 in the previous proposal to $6,000. However, $4,000 in retention bonuses were simultaneously cut.
In interviews with monopoly media and social media testimonies, some workers have reflected dissatisfaction with the terms of the contract—particularly that its 401(k) match and time to reach the top pay scale are not the same as what’s provided to workers in Seattle, and anger toward Boeing’s use of scabs during and after the strike.
Boeing’s gross profit was in the negative at the start of this year, a first since the start of 2021. Despite its falling profitability, government spending has kept it afloat enough to avoid mass layoffs and cuts. An increase in workload is seen at arms manufacturing facilities across the industry, resulting in a wave of strikes for better pay and conditions. Over 33,000 Boeing workers went on strike in 2024 that cost the company an estimated $100 million a day and $6 billion for its third quarter.
As US imperialism’s hegemony is increasingly threatened by national liberation movements in the third world and competition with imperialist powers, the government has increased production for its War Department while other industries face layoffs and budget cuts as part of the cyclical crisis of overproduction.
Image: IAM District 837 workers on strike. Credit: International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
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