Boeing strike to continue after workers reject new contract – ABC11 Raleigh-Durham

Boeing machinists on Wednesday rejected a new contract offer that would have ended a week-long work stoppage at the embattled aerospace company – and the union said the strike would continue.

Sixty-four percent of workers voted to reject the new contract, according to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the union representing 33,000 Boeing workers in Washington, Oregon and California.

Boeing officials said Wednesday night that the company had no comment on the vote.

The proposed contract would have provided raises of 35 percent over the four-year term of the contract, topping the cumulative 25 percent increase granted in a previous offer overwhelmingly rejected by workers in a vote last month. Initially, the workers demanded a 40% overall wage increase.

The proposal also called for an increase in Boeing’s contribution to the 401(k) plan, but it refused to comply with the workers’ call to restore the company’s defined benefit pension. The contract was to include a $7,000 ratification bonus for each worker, as well as a performance bonus that Boeing wanted to reject.

But union leaders said the concessions offered in the proposal were not enough to meet the demands of rank-and-file union members.

“This contract fight began more than ten years ago when the company overreached and created a wound that may never heal for many members,” John Holden, president of IAM District 751 in Seattle, said in a statement after the vote. “I don’t need to tell you how challenging it has been for our membership through the pandemic, the crashes, the massive inflation and having to deal with the losses stemming from the 2014 contract.”

The union said the strike will continue until they return to the negotiating table with the company.

Hours before workers were to vote Wednesday, Boeing released an earnings report showing the company lost a staggering $6.1 billion in the latest quarter, largely due to strike-related costs.

“We have some really big hurdles to overcome to move the company forward,” Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a letter to investors on Wednesday.

Ortberg singled out the strike as a problem that needed to be solved “first and foremost.”

“We worked frantically to find a solution that worked for the company and met the needs of our employees,” Ortberg said.

The company and its workers faced significant financial losses during the nearly six-week strike.

Union members were paid $250 a week from a strike fund beginning in the third week of the work stoppage. This compensation marked a significant pay cut for many of the employees.

Mid-ranking workers participating in the strike typically make $20 an hour, totaling $800 for a 40-hour work week, while the better-paid members receive wages of more than $100,000 a year, or nearly $2,000 a week.

“The question is whether the employees and their union decide they have the power to get more from Boeing,” Henry Harteveld, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, told ABC News. “The question is whether they think they can get more out of Boeing, or whether Boeing says, ‘You know what, this is it.'”

The strike was set to cost Boeing $108 million a day in lost revenue, amounting to $5.5 billion in losses if the work stoppage lasted 50 days, investment bank TD Cowen said in a report seen by ABC News at the start of the dispute. . The strike has lasted 40 days so far.

In September, Boeing announced furloughs and pay cuts to some white-collar workers in response to the strike. Last week, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg announced plans to cut 17,000 jobs, equivalent to about 10% of the global workforce.

“It’s really painful for Boeing,” Richard Aboulafia, managing director of aerospace consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, told ABC News.

The last IAM strike against Boeing in the Pacific Northwest in 2008 lasted 57 days. Work stoppages by unionized Boeing workers in the same region have historically lasted an average of 60 days, a Bank of America Global Research analysis found after examining seven previous strikes, the earliest in 1948.

In the days leading up to Wednesday’s vote, the outcome remained unclear, Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies labor, told ABC News.

“What will the workers do?” Rosenfeld said. “It’s a really tough question.”