Boeing Workers Vote to Continue the Fight: Escalation & Double Strike Pay Needed to Win!
Published 10/25/2024
by Workers Strike Back
Workers Strike Back stands in solidarity with the Boeing workers on strike, who have just rejected the company's latest offer by a supermajority of 64 percent.
This strike is about taking back some portion of what has been stolen by billionaires and the elite from working class people since the Great Recession. Like the GM workers in 2019, John Deere in 2021, and all of the UAW members who fought the Big Three auto companies last year, Boeing machinists are fighting for the right to work and retire with dignity and against a pace and hours of work that leave no time for workers to live their lives: we want to work to live, not live to work.
The entire labor movement as well as the broader community and working class needs to stand in solidarity with the Boeing machinists (IAM 751) and help make sure they have whatever they need to win every demand that they're fighting for.
By rejecting the company's original, insulting offer and ignoring the "last best and final" one which came two weeks later, IAM members have proved that by going on strike and staying out on strike during the vote, workers can force the company to give more. Boeing bosses increased their offered pay raises from the original 25%, up to 30%, and with the latest, rejected offer, to 35% over the life of the contract. Boeing is also being forced to restore the annual AMPP bonus payment and set it at a minimum of 4% a year, one of the prominent demands of the strike.
This is an important victory that Boeing workers have won after defeating two contract offers by large margins. This momentum urgently needs to be leveraged, and the strike escalated, in order to force the Boeing bosses to concede to the outstanding demands, such as restoring the defined benefit pensions which the bosses robbed from the workers in 2013-2014 with the active help of Democrat-dominated Washington State Legislature and Democrat Governor Jay Inslee.
However, given the one-third vote in favor of Boeing's last offer, there is a serious danger that the company will now try to wait the workers out, repeating the same offer with some unimportant changes in hopes that workers' resistance will weaken. As many workers on the picket line have pointed out, IAM's strike pay, currently at only $250 a week, falls far, far short of what workers need.
That has resulted in relatively weak attendance on picket lines and a sense that the strike could drag on into the winter. Strike pay should be at least doubled by IAM international, as Workers Strike Back has been calling for since the strike began. This can be backed up with an appeal for funds from other unions and the wider working class. But the primary responsibility for a well-resourced strike lies with IAM international leadership, who need to dramatically increase the strike fund immediately so workers can go to the picket lines rather than being forced to work other jobs.
Mass public rallies need to be organized, mobilizing both Boeing workers and the wider labor movement and community. A national campaign needs to be built, with demonstrations linking the Boeing workers' strike to broader demands for shorter hours without loss of pay, and pensions that allow workers to retire in comfort. The union movement also urgently needs to seriously fight to win Medicare For All - to take healthcare off the bargaining table and end once for all the threat, which Boeing has already carried out, that going on strike means losing access to healthcare. Mass support was built for industrial unions like the IAM and UAW using these methods, and that's what's needed now.
IAM members are leading the fight back against any idea that defined benefit pensions are lost forever. An analyst with Bank of America has estimated that it would cost Boeing about $1.6 billion a year to give all employees a pension. Over the past 16 years Boeing has spent over $68 billion in stock buybacks - enough to pay the pensions for the next 42 years.
Workers are demanding:
A 40% general wage increase over the life of the contract. We support both this demand and the union's original call for a first year increase of 20% — this won't make up for the 20% loss in workers incomes over the past decade but will get workers' current pay closer to what it was before the disastrous 2014 agreement.
Defined benefit pensions reinstated for all current and future members, retroactive to 2014 or the date of hire for newer employees.
No mandatory overtime.
No probationary period for new hires.
Free healthcare with NO copays or deductibles.
Workers’ democratically-elected quality control and safety boards. Workers on the shop floor need to have full control over safety, both for themselves and for the passengers who depend on them for the safety of aircraft in the air.
Contract to end on April 30th, 2028.
COLA fully based on the cost of living index, not a percentage of it.
Boeing is claiming poverty, with a financial report that was timed to come out on the same day that workers voted to reject the second offer. The report declared a record $6 billion in losses over the past quarter. But these losses are entirely due to the massive stock buybacks over the past period, and former CEO Dave Calhoun’s $45.5 million dollar golden parachute. It is the Boeing bosses’ absolutely reckless disregard for passenger and worker safety which has resulted in multiple accidents, hundreds of deaths and an undermining of Boeing — NOT workers’ reasonable demands.
What the past decade has shown is that aircraft production, like many essential parts of our society, is far too important to be left in control of these corporate looters. Workers Strike Back calls for public ownership of major corporations like Boeing, under democratic workers' control and management, and run in the interest of the working class.