After forty days on strike, 33,000 Machinists rejected an improved contract offer from Boeing by 64 percent on Wednesday. The offer included a 35 percent wage increase over four years.
Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 751 and District W24 build passenger jets and freighters, including the 737, 767, and 777. Most work at Boeing’s huge factories in Everett and Renton, Washington.
“It’s a little bit better, but it still needs to go further,” said Ky Carlson, who was staffing a picket line at Everett on Tuesday, where she would normally be assembling the 777.
“It’s an easy no vote for me,” said Jon Voss, a mechanic and steward at Renton, where he builds wings for 737, “because I know Boeing has multiple offers ready to just throw at us until we finally get what we deserve.”
Mylo Lang, an apprentice machinist at Boeing’s Auburn, Washington, fabrication plant, said his priorities were pay, retirement, time off, and no mandatory overtime. “We’ve made progress in each of those areas, but we haven’t gotten a big win, a definitive win in any of them.”
The union originally demanded a 40 percent raise, and most strikers still see that as the goal, with a bigger bump in the first year.
In the new offer, the company proposed to contribute 4 percent of pay into a 401(k), plus a match of up to 8 percent that a worker contributes, and a onetime $5,000 contribution to each worker’s 401(k).
But many people are sticking with the slogan, “No Pensions, No Planes,” said Carlson. They…
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Auteur: Jenny Brown
