And It Is On

So, following an overwhelming vote against the Boeing offer, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers is on strike.

Heard a bit of coverage on NPR today, and once again, they were subtly anti-union in their slant, as they always are.  Remember that at pledge time. 

The numbers are kind of mind boggling, 94.6% voting to reject the contract, and 96% voting to strike.

The IAM members clearly have no f%$#s left to give.

While a lot of this is about the fact that the last deal was not a good one, there were a lot of concessions, I also think that a lot of this is that the rank and file want to make airliners, and they feel that management is an impediment to their doing so.

Boeing Machinists union members voted Thursday by an overwhelming majority to reject management’s contract offer and go on strike.

Boeing’s 33,000 blue-collar workers were instructed to walk out at 12:01 a.m. Friday and stay out indefinitely.

International Association of Machinists District 751 President Jon Holden, who on Sunday urged members to accept the deal, announced the result to raucous cheers and chants of “Strike! Strike! Strike!” to about 80 Machinists late Thursday at the union headquarters in South Park.

“This is about respect, this is about addressing the past and this is about fighting for our future,” Holden told the crowd. “We strike at midnight.”

He said 94.6% voted to reject the contract and 96% voted to strike, more than the two-thirds majority required by union rules to authorize a walkout.

At a news conference after the announcement, Holden said “I’m proud of our members, proud of them for standing up and fighting for more, for each other, for their families, for the community.”

………

Even before Holden delivered the result, a team of union officials outside was busily cutting holes in large metal barrels, carving the initials “IAM” into the side of each and adding a cylindrical chimney on top. They’ll be used as “burn barrels,” with fires lit inside to keep pickets warm in the nights and days ahead.

Inside the hall, buckets were filled with premade “On Strike” signs.

Votes were tallied from polling places across the Puget Sound region, as well as in Moses Lake; Portland, Ore.; Victorville, Calif.; and Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

………

They did not even accept that Boeing’s stated wage increase was really 25% over four years as the company presented it, since the Machinists at the same time lost their annual bonus, which might have been worth around 4% each of those years.

Do the math:  25% -(4%  x 4 years) = 9% over 4 years.  Given the Federal Reserve's target of 2% inflation, that is awfully close to running in place.

Brandon Phelps, 35, a former U.S. Air Force mechanic who installed weapons systems on Boeing F-15s in Afghanistan and is now a team lead in the Renton 737 assembly plant, said the increase is just over 10% over four years once that takeaway is considered.

Boeing's, has been very conciliatory since the walkout, with its CFO saying that the aerospace giant is eager to return to negotiations.

Boeing's new CEO is actually in the process of moving to the Seattle area, where he bought a home in the tony Broadmoor gated community, a move likely intended  to mollify the palpable anger of Pacific Northwest employees.

The workers are in the drivers seat here.  Boeing has been hemorrhaging cash for some time, and its credit rating is currently Baa3 according to Moody's, one step above junk bond status, so it is NOT in a position to raise money easily or cheaply.

They need to get their assembly lines up and running quickly, particularly the lucrative 737 lines.