Boeing strikers hang tough against 'insulting' contract

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P.O. Box 404830 The strike by 58,000 Boeing machinists began over a month ago. Many striking machinists thought the strike would last—at tops-three weeks. But now it looks like it could be as bitter a struggle as the 1977 Boeing strike, which lasted 45 days.

Yet no matter how long the strike lasts, the walkout of Boeing workers, combined with the strike of Eastern machinists and Pittston coal miners, is symptomatic of a new militancy erupting among America's industrial workers.

On the other hand, the "hardball" stance of the companies is testimony to the fact that while workers want to erase the concessions of the past decade, the capitalist class will not take one step back from the victories they've scored.

Voting down "final" offer The Boeing strike began on Oct. 3, 1989, when over 40,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) filled the Seattle Kingdome and raucously voted down the company's "final" contract proposal by an 85 percent margin—well over the two-thirds majority needed to authorize a strike.

For a month, union and company representatives had yet to meet-despite the intervention of a federal mediator.

Meanwhile, Boeing, which employs a total of 144,000 employees and builds 60 percent of the capitalist world's commercial airliners, is playing a waiting game as union pickets pace back and forth at plant gates in Seattle, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; and Wichita, Kan.

The company had offered the workers a three-year package that included pay increases of 4 percent, 3 percent, and 3 percent annually; 8 percent and 3 percent lump-sum "bonuses" the first two years of the contract; cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) covering 99 percent of increases in inflation; and reduction of mandatory overtime from 200 hours to 160 hours per quarter.

"This contract is without a doubt one of the most lucrative contracts laid down in years," a Boeing spokesperson stated. "I don't feel like I'm feeding you a line," he told the Seattle press, "when I say we made a substantial economic offer to workers."

But the workers had a different opinion. "This is an insult," one veteran IAM member stated. "The company is sitting better than it ever has been, and this is the worst contract of my four." it remain "competitive in the market."

These sacrifices not only included wage and benefit concessions. For the last two years, the machinists have been working mandatory 10-hour days six and seven days a week. This dangerous, back-breaking pace of production is the result of a 1600-plane backlog in orders that Boeing must fill.

Many of the striking workers are convinced that Boeing made a provocative offer to force the machinists on strike. Boeing would use the strike as an excuse for its inability to fill its orders.

"I think Boeing promised its customers something it could not deliver and is making the workers pay for its mistake," a striking worker wrote to the Seattle Times.

Furthermore, in the past, the company has been fined for numerous safety violations:

IAM & AW Boeing Contract October 3, 1989 ACCEPT the Contract REJECT the Contract I VOTE TO REAFFIRM Strike Vote of September, 14. $128,780 by the Washington State Dept. of Labor for 36 violations, and $41,530 by the U.S. Dept. of Labor for 40 violations. Undoubtedly, some Boeing workers looked forward to this strike as a long overdue vacation from murderous working conditions.

What do the workers want?

The machinists and production workers want their fair share for making Boeing one of the most profitable aerospace companies in the world. The striking machinists have made their demands clear. They want a substantial wage increase—not a lump-sum bonus that doesn't figure into their wage and benefit package.

They want their 100 percent medical coverage reinstated for themselves and their families. Most important, they want voluntary overtime-not mandatory overtime, which has been used to increase production at minimal cost to the company, on the one hand, and bleed the workers, on the other.

Meanwhile, the striking machinists keep an upbeat attitude on the picketline.

On Saturday, Oct. 14, pickets brought their spouses and children to the plant gate in Puget Sound, Wash. On Sunday, Oct. 22, Rev. Jesse Jackson and over 2000 machinists and their families rallied in Seattle, Wash.

The machinists are confident of victory because they believe Boeing will have to settle if the company hopes to fill its long backlog of orders. So far, Boeing has not attempted to herd scab production workers into their plants. But the company is attempting to fill some plane orders by using managerial personnel.

Unfortunately, the second largest union at Boeing, the Seattle Professional Engineering Employees Association (SPEAA) is crossing the machinists' picketlines, ostensibly because of a "no strike" clause in their contract, which expires in December of this year.

So the Boeing workers are faced with the same dilemma as other workers: Formulating a political strategy to win a strike in the face of a company that's dead serious about dealing the union a defeat.

It is from such dilemmas that a class-struggle left wing develops in the unions. In a city that once had a celebrated general strike, the labor movement has a good point from which to start.

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ing about the spirit of solidarity that seemed to arise spontaneously in the face of great stress, loss, and human misery. Strangers still stop to pick up stranded commuters. Cars driven with no extra passengers are considered by many to be anti-social.

Is this an exception to the callousness and backward social attitudes we have been told are now common among the American people? I don't think so.

In times of social turmoil, the victims of injustice tend to come together to change their state. When they do, they demonstrate again and again the deep sense of love and respect for human life inherent in us all. When they do, all the prejudice and hatred of the past dissolve into the shared knowledge that we have more in common with each other than we do with those who live for the dollar.

When people come together to work for social change-and more and more, they will-the world is in for a magnificent future.

at those in the labor movement who have