One of the many Boeing workers in WSB-land just forwarded us this word from the union – Machinists are going on strike at a minute past midnight tonight. As has been pointed out, that means a lot of families and potentially businesses affected in our area (and around the Boeing facilities not that far to our east, among others), so we wanted to post it here. This is the page on the union website with details.
Is going on strike the only way to get a raise for union members? Just wondering.
Yes. The company wanted to keep the last 40¢ an hour COLA too! (COLA = Cost of Living Allowance = inflation adjustment)
No, they were offered a pretty good raise.
The union has to justify its existence somehow.
Ann – one of the lines in Boeings contract offer that was rejected was the removal of survivor benefits – that means that if you are a stay at home Mom taking care of the kids/house and your husband passes away that you would NOT be collecting his retirement.
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They also wanted to hire new employees direct off the street at a wage HIGHER than those that had been with the company for over a year for the same job/pay code.
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With the high cost of housing/gas/groceries, etc. the company also wanted to not pay the 40¢ COLA that has been in contracts for years.
Justify their existence?
Please justify that.
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Gratuitous slam here: please speak only on subjects that you are familiar with.
Is there anyway they can have their strike without me having to hear about it for the next few weeks. It’s fine, it is their right to strike just keep it between the employees and Boeing. And for the record my father worked for Boeing starting in 1951, he did not care for the ups and downs of the airplane business then.
Too bad they are striking, Boeing is a FAB place to work, guess they do not read headlines from across the nation like the unemployment rate is up to 6.1%. I have heard it’s more about outsourcing. Yeah, that is a tough one BUT it can be a fact of life for many companies, nothing is a sure thing, even life itself. I hope it is over soon, the downstream waterfall fallout of this action affects more then the people on strike.
I would like to question why all of this attention is being placed on what the union isn’t getting when I work for Boeing but am not in a union and I get no guarantees at all! I could be laid off tomorrow, my pension negated, my health insurance raised at any point and I would have no say. This is true of most companies in the country so when they are asking for a cost of living raise and they get a lump sum wage and extra benefits, I would like to remind all that I don’t get these. My raise (which includes my cost of living raise) is VERY small but more importantly is based on my performance. The union gets a straight raise no matter if you are the worst union worker or the best…how is this fair? Why should the union be treated any differently than the rest of us working folk? What are they doing differently than me other than joining a large pact and bullying Boeing into making a better offer?I would like to question why all of this attention is being placed on what the union isn’t getting when I work for Boeing but am not in a union and I get no guarantees at all! I could be laid off tomorrow, my pension negated, my health insurance raised at any point and I would have no say. This is true of most companies in the country so when they are asking for a cost of living raise and they get a lump sum wage and extra benefits, I would like to remind all that I don’t get these. My raise (which includes my cost of living raise) is VERY small but more importantly is based on my performance. The union gets a straight raise no matter if you are the worst union worker or the best…how is this fair? Why should the union be treated any differently than the rest of us working folk…
Frank: sounds like you need a union!
All workers in Seattle, even those who don’t work for Boeing, should support the union for holding the line; if Boeing Machinists don’t prevent the company from taking away benefits, the company will feel it can get away with taking away benefits from non-unionized employees, too. And other employers will follow suit.
We live in a country which has chosen to provide health care and retirement to its people through employers, rather than through the government. (Whether that’s the best way to do it is a different debate.) Employers’ top responsibility, in general, is not to their workers but to their shareholders. So the employers have every incentive to cut their costs, including workers’ benefits, as much as they can. If the workers don’t stick together, the employers can strip health care and retirement benefits from them as much as they like. Yes, it will hurt them down the line as they lose good workers who can get better jobs, but the shareholders are more interested in short-term results than in the long-term health of the company.
If you’re dependent on your employer for health care and retirement, you should stick by the Machinists.
Frank I work for Boeing too and I agree with you. Who knows, we could get laid off because of this strike. The paper today said the machinists get a average of 54K a year without overtime. That my friend is a great wage. Boeing offers great bennies, they really do. How many companies close down and give paid Christmas time off to all. Boeing does…need I say more?
Babs, remember that the “close down” at Christmas is really the accumulation of all the other holidays that everyone else enjoys throughout the year; Presidents Day, Columbus Day, Martin Luther King, etc… that schools, government, postal workers and many more get each year. Boeing collects all those individual holidays and uses it to enhance the Christmas-New Years break so that we can be with our families.
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As far as the wage of Boeing workers – do you want an airplane that is designed to last for 30 years being build by professionals (the airlines do!), or someone who is working there as a interim until they find a better paying job that pays more? The starting pay at Boeing is currently $12.72 for the average worker represented by the Union – Home Depot pays more! That doesn’t count the -5- weeks of pre-employment training that is taken without pay! Home Depot doesn’t require that. Maybe Babs would be happier at Home Depot instead of Boeing?
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Again – please only comment if you are REALLY familiar with the issue!
Scott, thanks for the insight. Sorry sell it some place else. I have worked for the goverment and several other big giants, by far Boeing is the best. Maybe some of the strikers should work at Home Depot and find out how rough the real world is.
So no more hating Scott toward me, just because I love my job and I love the company who I think does a great job providing for employees. Have a great day.
80,000 jobs lost, home forclousers, and people trying feed their famalies. However this union is looking for more money while the rest of the country is hurting. What a joke. I think I will put my app in and undercut them, because they are the real rats. Why do you think companies continue to outsource, this is just another reason to hire cheap labor outside the U.S.
I have a good idea, why don’t we elect a president who is going to tax more business and give us more government programs. That way we can all strike our private companies and not have to work at all. That sounds good right?
Scott, as far as I know this is a blog where anyone can voice an opinion and not the IAM website. So, as a thirty year employee who has worked both sides of the fence, I will attempt to give an opinion with the experience to back it up. I am tired of the new hires whining about the entry level wages, was someone holding their family hostage when they accepted employment?, no, everyone of them knew exactly what the starting wage was as well as the benefits offered before they accepted the offer, and were excited to be in the door. They are also guaranteed a raise every six months until they reach the top wage of their pay scale, something I don’t believe Home Depot offers. The union set the tone of this working together negotiation from day one with their “Its our time this time”. Expect to see any new derivitives built elsewhere, why these union employees expect the company to share the profits is beyond me, do you suppose there just might be a few other employees who work there and just as hard as well as a few stockholders who also might deserve a cut?
@ John – Boeing Employees asking for a fare contract negotiation has no effect on the citizens of this nation who are having their homes foreclosed upon. Actually, I take that back. Asking for fare pay and benefits works to prevent said foreclosures for that specific group of people. Who pays the Boeing Employee’ wages? Boeing does. Can you please explain to me how a better contract for these hard working individuals could have a negative effect on the economy?
You should never assume that someone is uninformed just because they disagree with you.
I agree with you, Anne. You should not assume that someone is uninformed because they disagree with you. In this case the points that were made here are moot. So, if you’d like to put a label on Scott’s comment, observation would be a better term than assumption.
For 28 years, since the day Reagan took office, there has been a non-stop assault on unions by the rightwing in the federal and state governments. Union membership rate is now at around 8% in the private sector, compared to nearly 20% in 1980. Over the same period, and not coincidentally, real wages have remained stagnant over the same period, despite the fact that productivity has doubled. You read from time to time about the growing gap between the wealthy and the rest of us: that’s where the productivity gains went.
So I really don’t understand why non-union workers at Boeing, or at Home Depot, or anywhere else would be against the machinists’ union. We should _all_ be in unions. Without unions we would be even more screwed than we already are.
We need to vote for candidates who will roll back the anti-union legislation of the past 30 years. We need to support union organization no matter where it occurs. It took a long time to destroy the unions, and it will take a long time to build them back, but we have to try. And we have to stand by each other as workers, union or not.
zerodacus – please go back and read my comments again. There is nothing there that said that new employees are being paid too much or too little, when in fact I was actually pointing out to the comment made by Babs (in particular) about the 57k/y that Boeing says that machinists make – when that is an average and -many- folks are below that figure. Stating the $12.72 wage for starting was to make that point very clear.
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See, even now I’m not saying the figure is too much or too little for new hires.
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I have worked for -much- less during layoff periods, I know what hard work is, and also that working at Boeing is also hard work. I’ve not been there for 30 years as you stated, but been there long enough to say that my starting wage was $9.65 an hour and that I’d taken a pay cut to take that wage too.
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Those of us that are represented by the union have had good times and bad times during contract years. There were years that we didn’t get what we asked for, because the company was on hard times too, and many of us were getting laid off. This is not one of those times.
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There is FAR more to this contract than what the media is feeding you. The ‘sound bite’ sounds good, but certainly does not tell even a small part of the whole picture. Follow the link in the story at the top of this page and find out the ‘rest of the story’ (sorry Paul).
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As an observation, I’m really amazed that the company thought that this contract offer would pass the membership of the union. I’ve been there long enough to know that this was by far the most vocal times in the many contract times that I’ve even been in. I knew a week ago that we’d be on strike. My wife and I were at the store a week ago and she asked me if I needed more lunches and my reply was that I only needed 2 because we’d be out on strike in 2 more work days (before the 48 hours was announced). The company would have known too if they were at all listening to the employees, “The decision by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers to reject our contract offer is deeply disappointing, to say the least.” (source: http://www.boeing.com/2008negotiations/pdf/090508_IAM_message.pdf ) – Scott Carson Divisional CEO/Divisional President/Executive VP who is listed on Forbes’ webpage profile as having a total compensation of $1,911,205 for 2007 (do a search for: “Scott Carson+Boeing+$” on Google and it’ll be the 5th item). — everyone I work with thought that his message was very arrogant and proved that the company wasn’t listening.
Very Excellent Blog. I having obtained my retirement through a different faction of IAM,
Local 1005 In Portland, Oregon, vehemently give My verbal support to your cause. Reaganomics is still alive and working against Unions, even though the Man is Rotting in His Grave.
I hope your Benefits and the Benefits to your Family are not compromised. These Benefits are invaluable after retirement. I was Not blessed with Medical after Retirement, so am I informing You all that even with Medicare, Medical, alone, can cost you all your extra cash to stay afloat, whilst the Fat Cats at the top will snicker at you whilst living as Gods!!
I combed the website for a way to donate to the strike fund, but could not find one. I’m not in the union, just a supporter, for reasons I stated above. Can someone who knows please post how we may donate? Also, someone in the union please pass along that a “donate to the strike fund here” button on the web page would be helpful?
One way to donate to the union is to bring food to the union hall. In years past folks have dropped off bread, apples, whatever… and even companies have dropped off donuts, coffee and pizza’s to those out at the various picket lines. ALL were very much appreciated.
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If you are an employer and want to help, call the union hall and let them know that you could use some short term labor, many folks are now looking for temporary job assignments while this strike is going on. Remember, there are MANY trades and as many very talented folks that have skills that you may be looking for.
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As the weather gets colder, wood of any kind will be very much appreciated! Pallets, firewood, etc.
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Remember, whether you believe in unions or not, if you believe in this strike or not, ALL of us at Boeing have a very strong impact on the local economy and the longer we are out the more impact we’ll have on you and/or your neighbors in whatever jobs they have. There is a ripple effect throughout the neighborhoods/towns/cities that we work and live in.
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Just remember, we DO remember those individuals and companies that support us during this time, and we’ll remember you after the strike is over too!
Remember, whether you believe in unions or not, if you believe in this strike or not, ALL of us at Boeing have a very strong impact on the local economy and the longer we are out the more impact we’ll have on you and/or your neighbors in whatever jobs they have. There is a ripple effect throughout the neighborhoods/towns/cities that we work and live in.
Well said. That touches on a point I was trying to make in response to a previous comment on this entry with regards to homes being foreclosed on and the falling economy.
My Mom as well as many other members of my family work as Machinists’ at Boeing and I will be accompanying them on the picket line in an attempt to show my support for this hard working group of people.
Did anyone in this strike stop to consider that they are not the only ones who will be suffering. The companies that supply and support Boeing are now having layoffs due to cancelled orders. Thanks for your consideration of the rest of us unemployed. A Union isn’t going to help us any going into the winter heating season.
I left Detroit many years ago to reside in Seattle. My father worked at Ford for 32 years and at the end he said the UAW was killing the Detroit auto industry. I believe the aerospace unions should look at michigan’s history. Too bad Washington state is following that path. These hot shot machinists won’t be so demanding when Boeing shuts down most manufacturing in Washington state. The workers will be able to take a lower paying position in another state or country.. Sorry but those are the facts
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