Mondays and Wednesdays are loud at the vast Boeing factory in Everett, Washington. As the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers’ (IAM) contract campaign heats up, the workforce has been serenading management at lunch with air horns, train horns, and vuvuzelas — plus chants of “Out the Door in ’24.”
Forty miles south, in Renton, where workers construct the moneymaking 737, second-shift workers have used their meal breaks to blast Bluetooth speakers at top volume with ’90s rap, death metal, ’80s pop, and opera — all simultaneously, said Jon Voss, a thirteen-year mechanic in the wings building. The resulting racket “really drove management and HR nuts.”
The Boeing contract expires September 12 for 31,000 members of Machinists District Lodge 751 in Washington and 1,300 District W24 members in Gresham, Oregon. The last time a full contract was negotiated was 2008, with a fifty-eight-day strike.
A workday rally July 17 at the Seattle Mariners baseball stadium drew 25,000 — including a procession of eight hundred motorcyclists — and 99.9 percent of members attending voted to sanction a strike, the first step toward a walkout under the Machinists constitution. They will vote again when they see a proposed contract.
At issue are starting wages that barely match nearby fast-food jobs, the replacement of a defined-benefit pension eight years ago with successive tiers of cheaper and cheaper 401(k)s, and mandatory overtime that eats up weekends and leaves workers mentally and physically spent.
“It’s driving people…
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Auteur: Jenny Brown
