Update: 96% of members rejected the deal in a September 13 Boeing union strike vote.
Boeing has been a bit of a disaster lately. Its Starliner space capsule broke down, stranding some astronauts in Earth’s orbit. Parts have been popping off of their commercial airplanes for quite some time now. And whistleblowers have been mysteriously dying.
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Not a great time to be a Boeing executive, shareholder, or even janitor.
But there’s one bright spot in all of this. The aeronautics company has reached a tentative deal with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, or IAM, that seeks to prevent a potential strike scheduled for September 13. If the deal is ratified, the workers will receive a 25% wage increase over four years, along with a ton of new retirement and health benefits.
Even though the 25% wage increase falls dramatically short of the 40% increase demanded by the union at the onset of negotiations, union leaders have described the tentative deal as the best they have ever negotiated.
It’s hard to argue against that claim, since the workers now get all sorts of additional benefits like increased paid paternal leave and increased input from the union on safety and quality issues during production. The deal also includes a promise from Boeing to build its next unannounced line of commercial jets in the Seattle area, where its workers are located.
All told, the union represents nearly 647,000 US workers across 20 industries in the United States and Canada, including 32,000 Boeing employees who will directly benefit from this new deal.
Some other benefits included in the deal include 401(k) contributions of up to $4,160 per employee along with $3,000 lump sum payments. Sounds like the union got a fantastic deal here, even though it did not achieve one of its stated goals: restoring a defined benefit pension plan that had been eliminated by the company in 2014.
President of IAM District 751 Jon Holden said that while the union didn’t get everything it wanted, he acknowledged that negotiations “are a give and take” and is still overjoyed by the tentative deal.
The union had Boeing exactly where it wanted them. All of the bad press the company has faced recently left it in a weakened position with little power or room to negotiate. Boeing, not wanting to add a worker’s strike to its long list of controversies, appears to have offered the union almost everything it wanted. All that’s left now is to ratify the deal on September 12.
