Boeing has proposed a deal that striking unions have said is good enough to put to members on Wednesday 23 October 2024, raising the prospect that the aviation giant might soon succeed in putting an end to a costly five weeks of industrial action.
The proposed deal
The International Association of Machinists said the deal on the table will see wages rise by 35% over four years, beating previously rejected offers of 25% and 30%. Its members’ 401(k) plans (company pensions) will also be boosted further, but will not be reverted to the plans scrapped a decade ago, which some members had called for. There is a $4000 proposed enhancement in workers’ signing offers too, up to $7000.
Despite what it termed “several key improvements”, union officials did not formally endorse the deal, saying only that “it warrants presenting to the members and is worthy of your consideration.”
Striking workers at #Boeing will vote Wednesday on a contract proposal that includes a 35% pay raise over four years that could end a five-week-old strike. pic.twitter.com/92Te1B7CZf
— Global Capital Asset Management™ (@GCAssets) October 19, 2024
Multiple crises
Brokered indirectly by Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, if the deal gets past the unions 33,000 striking members, it will put an end to at least part of Boeing’s current financial problems. It recently announced $33 billion in losses since two deadly 737 MAX crashes that saw its fleet grounded repeatedly.
In what some might see as a hardball move, the company referenced the strike, which is estimated to be costing $1 billion a month, as well as crises on numerous other fronts such as the safety groundings and development delays, when it announced 17,000 job losses and a production pause for its 777X in an 11 October memo to staff.
BREAKING: @Boeing machinists vote to STRIKE, effective immediately. This means 32,000 @IAM751 and W24 members are on the picket lines starting TONIGHT. Vote to strike was 96% for it pic.twitter.com/gBUKmkRYOn
— Ryan Simms (@RyanTVnews) September 13, 2024
Does Boeing really have financial woes?
Boeing had previously said its former offer of a 30% wage increase was its “best and final” and that anything over that would be “far in excess of what can be accepted if we are to remain competitive as a business.”
Some union members may see the upping of that “best and final” offer as a sign that their employer has more money in its wage tank than it says, especially if they read CNN reports that for the aircraft manufacturer “pay and benefits for the workers make up only a small fraction of the cost of producing a plane” and that “it is not likely Boeing would be forced out of business by its current financial crisis” thanks to its duopoly position alongside Europe’s Airbus as the only world suppliers of full-size jets.
Boeing remains the largest US goods exporter and injects around $79 billion a year to the country’s economy, employing 1.6 million people across 50 states.
