The airplane maker is just NOT having a good time….
Quality control problems for commerical and military aircraft…..
Now this?
Union memebership IS on the downslide ….
Companies have also automated functions squeezing the countries labor markets……
The union involved has NOT had contarct increase since 2008…..
Many striking Boeing workers told The Washington Post they would not settle until Boeing offered a deal with wage gains closer to the 40 percent over four years requested by the union — up from the 25 percent offered. They also told The Post they had been saving up to go on strike for months and even years….
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Part of the opportunism is because Boeing machinists have been working under the same contract since 2008, and they gave up major concessions, including their pensions, in intervening years to keep airplane production in Washington state.
At the same time, the embattled aerospace giant is in a particularly vulnerable state and can’t afford to lose what could be as much as $1 billion a week in production. And two rating agencies reported they are considering downgrading Boeing’s credit…
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Labor experts say it is highly unusual for workers to so overwhelmingly reject a contract recommended by union leadership. Boeing workers voted 96 percent to oppose the contract, which “sends a very strong message to Boeing to dig in the pockets deeper,” said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Raymond Fultz, a 27-year Boeing employee, said he’s never seen workers vote so uniformly in favor of a strike as they did now. It’s an accumulation of the last 10 years of pay stagnation and disappearing benefits, he said.
“I’m out here to fight for the younger generation to get the pension back,” he said….