Every few years, local employment magnate Boeing, goes through a strike.
Sometimes they are short lived.
Sometimes they go on for months.
The current one is looking like the latter of those two choices. This headline and story is from July.
Boeing Machinists 99% in favor of strike
Thousands of Boeing Machinists who assemble the company’s jetliners filled the former home of the Seattle Sonics on Wednesday to authorize their union to strike if a new labor contract can’t be reached.
They are demanding a much bigger share of The Boeing Co.’s success of the past three years — and they are prepared to walk in September and shut down Boeing’s jetliner production if they don’t get it.
“It’s payback time,” one union leader, Mark Blondin, said to thunderous applause. He was president of Local 751 of the International Association of Machinists during contact talks in 2005 and 2002 and is now the national union’s aerospace coordinator.
All the best sources are saying that attitudes haven’t changed a bit since then.
The funniest part of that article is the title. The majority of the Boeing employees who call themselves a “Machinist” couldn’t find the ON switch on a mill or lathe in under 30 seconds. The same standard goes for someone who works at Boeing as an “Electrician”.
Most Boeing employees are just like GM employees: Over paid and Under worked. And there are generational lines, sometimes three and four long, treating the company for granted.
The locals don’t call it “The Lazy B Ranch” for nothing.
Certainly, there are some folks who do some sort of actual work for Boeing, since they do churn out actual product. But if it weren’t for the UAW styled union always demanding more pay for less work, Boeing could easily cut 10% off their employment rolls and not see a negative tick in production.
There are even not-so-family friendly names for when Boeing goes on strike. And us non-Boeing employees love these times. Cars, boats, jetskis, quads, and especially firearms, bought by Boeing employees during their high times, go on the sales block, and at fire sale prices.
I’ll be wishing I had a couple grand extra saved up here in the next couple weeks since these cat’s bennies are drying up and the union is telling them to file for unemployment.
And what, are the employees asking for, you may ask?
Everything. More pay, better contributions to the pension, cheaper medical. And you can add no more outsourcing and a promise not to pull a Toyota/BMW/Nissan/Honda and move production to where it is cheaper, like, say, the Southeastern part of the country.
Are they going to get it?
My Magic 8-Ball is telling me no.
Boeing CEO in no hurry to settle strike
Boeing chairman and chief executive Jim McNerney sent a memo to employees Monday that was also a firm message to the Machinists union: Though the ongoing strike is now into its fifth week and all commercial jet production is halted, Boeing won’t scramble to settle on the union’s terms.
McNerney warned that the International Association of Machinists’ (IAM) “track record of repeated union work stoppages” is “earning us a reputation as an unreliable supplier to our customers.”
….
“It would be gravely unwise for Boeing to agree to terms in any contract that would fundamentally restrict our ability to manage our business,” McNerney wrote. “U.S. auto companies, for one, all but fatally wounded themselves years ago by promising unsustainable wage and benefit levels and by agreeing to contract conditions (including job guarantees) that limited their flexibility to run their businesses in the face of intense global competition. Today, their market shares continue to fall, and their layoffs have grown by the thousands.”
“We want this strike to end,” said McNerney. “But we cannot sacrifice our long-term competitiveness for expedience in a short-term agreement to end the walkout.”
In the midst of all the other financial ups and downs America is currently going through, these folks are going to play chicken with an international corporation. I may not even need a couple thousand saved in reserve to be buying their second hand stuff. They’ll be feeling lucky to get a case of dog food by January.
They need to take their raise and get down to actually working for a living. Just being somewhere for eight hours shouldn’t guarantee you a paycheck.
