Community rally to support Boeing strikers

by B. J. Mangaoang

This article was reprinted from the November 4, 1995 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

Thousands of area residents will join in a rally to support Boeing strikers on Sunday, Nov. 12 from 2-4 p.m. at the Everett Memorial Stadium here.

The rally, called by District 751, International Association of Machinists, the Washington State Labor Council, the King, Pierce and Snohomish labor councils, and Washington State Jobs with Justice, will demonstrate recognition that the strikers' demands are good for the whole community.

Union, community and church groups are cooperating in the work of building the rally. Several of the nation's top labor leaders, including Machinists President George Kourpias, are expected to attend.

Boeing workers struck Oct. 6 for job security, wage increases and better medical benefits. At the last minute, Boeing threw on the table a demand that workers pay $45 a month per family for medical benefits. Deductibles would rise from $225 to $450 per family. Although job security is the union's number one demand, workers are angry at what they see as a foot-in-the-door move to shift medical costs to them.

Negotiations began Oct. 23 between the company and Seattle Professional Engineering Employees Association (SPEEA), representing 20,000 engineers and technical workers. District 751 held a news conference October 23 to show their support for SPEEA, whose members have been doing picket duty for striking Machinists Union members, as well as helping with food and other necessities.

"We won't let the company pit one group of workers against another," said Bill Johnson, District 751 president./p>

The Boeing strike is the biggest in the country in an industry that generates a $25 billion dollar trade surplus and a company that is number 14 on FORTUNE magazine's list of top 500 corporations. About one-third of the IAM's 500,000 membership are aerospace workers and the Boeing contract has traditionally been the trendsetter for the whole aerospace industry. In the next 12 months, the union will bargain with units of McDonnell Douglas, Pratt & Whitney, Rohr, Lockheed, Beech, Cessna and Learjet.

Employment in the aerospace industry has dropped 35 percent between 1989 and 1994. Boeing has cut its Puget Sound work force from a peak of 39,000 in 1990 to 23,500 today.

Yet the corporation has just announced its earnings were up 22 percent in the third quarter of this year -- $225 million for the quarter. An analyst with Ragen Mackenzie in Seattle said that Boeing is "very healthy financially. But if the strike lasts it could lose money in the fourth quarter."

According to Doug Griffith, president of UAW Local 148 (aerospace), "Boeing is the fattest hog on the block. Workers have a right to a proportional share of its prosperity."

With 60 percent of world commercial plane production, Boeing has for a generation claimed that "what's good for Boeing is good for the community, state and nation." It has demanded and won tax concessions from the state legislature. It avoids states sales tax by making delivery of planes from outside the state.

The Washington State Communist Party in its Economic Bill of Rights says that some $2 billion is lost to the state's treasury because of the "Boeing exemption."