Strike grounds Boeing

by Will Parry & Elizabeth Yates

This article was reprinted from the October 14, 1995 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

SEATTLE - The Boeing Company, the world leader in airplane production, is shut down tight, as its 32,000 workers launched a nationwide strike on Oct. 6 after rejecting, by margin of 76 to 24 percent, a "final" company offer studded with takeaways.

"It stinks," said one worker, succinctly expressing the consensus of pickets contacted by the World.

The strikers are members of the International Association of Machinists, some 25,000 of whom work in Boeing facilities in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Boeing also employees more than 7,500 union members at its plant in Wichita, Kansas and smaller numbers in plants near Portland, Ore. and Spokane, Wash.

They were angered by the multi-million dollar stock bonuses that Boeing Chairman Frank Shrontz and other top officers recently received, while at the same time, the company offered the workers cuts in health care.

"I think the change growing in labor around the country is reflected here," said Matt Bates, union spokesperson.

The union of engineers and technicians at Boeing immediately expressed support for the Machinists' strike. Support was also forthcoming from IAM President George Kourpias and from John Sweeney, president of the Service Employees Union and candidate for AFL-CIO president.

Since 1990 Boeing has raked in $6.6 billion in aggregate net profit, despite the recent order downturn. Now orders are piling up again, but the company complains that to compete in the cutthroat world market, it must ship more jobs overseas where wages are lower.

The union estimates that Boeing's proposed changes in the medical plan could cost each worker conservatively over $1,000 a year. Bates considers it "ironic" that Boeing is trying to make draconian cuts in health care.

"They complain that their major competition comes from Airbus in Germany where their employees are covered with a national health program."

A tour of 18 picket sites in Seattle, Kent and Auburn during the four to eight morning shift yielded a uniform response: "Don't touch our medical coverage!"

After thousands of workers had responded to a sustained company drive to encourage early retirement, the company's final offer also included increased deductibles and out-of- pocket expenses limits in retirees' medical coverage.

Pickets denounced this as "a low blow" and "a cheap shot," and pointed out that retirees can't vote on the contract. Many senior workers nearing retirement were especially irate.

Workers also resented the refusal of the company to make a meaningful response to the union's number one issue of job security. The work force in the Puget Sound area has been cut from 39,000 in 1990 to 23,500 today through layoffs, downsizing, subcontracting, and combining two or more jobs into one.

Especially rankling is the company policy of off loading, or contracting out, the manufacture of aircraft components to (often non-union) contractors in Mexico, Poland, China and Alabama. For example, the 145 workers who make insulation blankets for commercial aircraft were praised last winter as the most efficient workers in the fabrication division. A month later, these workers were notified that the blanket shop was being shut down and their jobs shipped to Mexico.

Now the company is driving to cut an additional $600 million out of its manufacturing costs by additional off loading. This would increase the percentage of Boeing aircraft built by foreign and non-union suppliers to 52 percent.

The company's only response on job security and off loading was a proposal to brief the union on its decisions semi- annually instead of annually. On wages, the company offered lump sum bonuses of 5 percent and 3 percent in 1995 and 1996, but no general wage increase until 1997, the final year of the contract. Boeing's European rival, Airbus, pays "significantly higher wages" than Boeing, the union says.

On pensions, the company proposed only to raise the basic benefit from $35 to $37 per month per year of service -- substantially below the $40 recently negotiated by the union at McDonnell Douglas -- Boeing's main U.S. competitor. The company pension fund is now above $9 billion -- "so rich that the company didn't put a dime in it last year," an Everett shop steward said.

"They thought we'd buy it. They told us it was 'fair and equitable.' Well, we showed them it wasn't acceptable," Dave Engle, president of Machinists Local Lodge 834 in Wichita, told the World.