If you haven’t heard it already, the spoiled children (aka the District 751 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Union employees) who make parts for Boeing Aircraft Manufacturing have rejected the last contract offer given by the Boeing Company and began their strike last Friday at midnight. I meant to blog on it Friday but got waylaid by other things.
Let me just say: This is going to be good fun to watch.
They union is holding out for heaven and earth to be moved for them and called Boeing’s offer of only making the sun rise and set “An Insult�. The union told their members to reject it and they did exactly that, surpassing the necessary 75% to strike with an 86% strike vote.
This could well be the death of the IAMAW. They don’t really have much to bargain with other than the fact that 86% of their members voted to strike last week. Their membership is down in recent years and the Boeing Company has gotten stronger, beating Airbus in the number of orders and quantity of planes ordered.
What the union geeks fail to recognize is that Boeing was smart enough to write strike clauses in their sales contracts so that the company won’t get punished financially if they deliver the planes late. That and Reuters is reporting that analysts don’t see a problem of Boeing losing any ground to airbus if the strike last for the rest of the year.
Barely Governeor Gregoire is ‘concerned’ what the effect of the strike will have on the company. She is really only worried about the sales tax income from Boeing employees spending like there is no tomorrow, as is their habit, especially around Christmas time. If she really cared, she’d get her cronies in the state house to write some new legislature making Washington a Right to Work state. But she doesn’t, so she won’t.
Speaking of the holidays, while Boeing may lose money from incoming new orders, they are going to save millions if they can wait it out until the end of the year so that they don’t have to dish out the huge Christmas bonuses that these spoiled children get every year.
Boeing just has to sit back and wait for these guy’s strike money and personal savings to run out and they can get them all back for the cost of the contract that just expired.
It will be a game of attrition and there is no way Boeing can lose under those rules. First they bankrupt the union, then the employees start coming back one by one for their old contract.
At least, that is my hope for this situation. If Boeing capitulates, they’re consigning themselves to the noose of the union for another 50 years. I am sick and tired of these spoiled children demanding things they haven’t earned every few years. Productivity has been stagnant for a decade and employee skills haven’t gone up.
Around these parts, we call Boeing “The Lazy-B Ranch�, and not without reason. This is the same union that has stood up for employees caught sleeping in the rafters while on the clock and for thieves.
Goodbye union, hello newly freed employees.
Does this make it sound as if I don’t like unions?
Good, because I don’t. Working with Teamsters can make a fella like that.
