Boeing ...Boeing.... Gone

UNITY IS STRENGTH

Boeing is the country’s 30th largest company, with revenue of $81.7 billion and profit of $3.9 billion last year.  CEO Jim McNerney made $27.5 million in 2012, a 20% raise from his previous salary. On December 15 Boeing announced a $10 billion stock buyback, plus a 50 percent increase in the dividend. The stock is up 80 percent for the year. [A company buys back its own stock in order to make shares scarcer and thus increase their price. It is a frequent practice when a company has extra cash sitting around and doesn't want to use it to build new factories or employ people.] Washington state legislators recently approved $8.7 billion in tax breaks for Boeing over the next 16 years. It’s the largest state tax subsidy in U.S. history. This at a time when highly profitable Boeing want to eliminate pensions, using the threat of moving work on its forthcoming 777X plane out of Washington state as an ultimatum.

 In November 31,000 Machinists at Boeing rejected an 11-year contract against the recommendation of the union leaders of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Their current contract doesn’t expire until 2016. Boeing had demanded an end to the defined-benefit pension as of 2016, ending accruals for all workers and replacing it with a 401(k)-type structure with very small company contributions. The company also demanded steep increases in medical payments and a change to the pay structure that would mean new workers would not reach top pay for 20 years. Wage increases would have been 1 percent every other year.

Under the current step system, in a typical pay grade, Grade 4, minimum pay is $15, maximum is $35.25. Workers get raises of 50 cents an hour for the first six years, then a big jump to top pay. Under the proposed system, new hires would never get the big jump, so they would cost Boeing far less. Boeing even promised $10,000 apiece upon approval, but the workers didn’t take the bait, opposing the scheme by 67 percent.

Both the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, and the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME Council 28, one of the state’s largest unions, came out strongly in support of District 751’s stand against concessions. WFSE Executive Director Greg Devereux wrote that eliminating defined-benefit pensions for future workers “sets a dangerous precedent for all workers in Washington State. …If Boeing guts the Machinists’ pensions, how soon will it be before the State follows?"

There, unfortunately, less solidarity being offered by other supposed fellow workers in a race to the bottom. The financial secretary at United Auto Workers Local 148, which represents Boeing workers in Long Beach, California, has been reported as saying that his union had already accepted some concessions the Machinists in Washington rejected. For one thing, he said, new UAW Local 148 workers don’t get pensions—something the Machinists, he observed, have refused to give up. Local 148 President Stan Klemchuk told the LA Times that “if an extension were offered [to get the Boeing work], the membership would take it in a heartbeat.” He told Labor Notes, “Of course we would like to get the work but we are not trying to steal any jobs.”

Intent upon reaching an agreement with the employers, the IAM are holding a new vote on a slightly revised deal on 3rd January.

The above will no doubt remind those in Britain of the recent case of INEOS, where the the closure and loss of jobs at the Grangemouth oil refinery enable the owners to push through curs in working conditions and pay. When push comes to shove, sadly, the bosses have more muscle.  Boeing's fight against its machinists exposes capitalism that instead of industrial growth translating into national prosperity, the only reasonable pay for workers is enough to sustain them to live and work to produce value for their bosses and nothing more.  For Boeing workers there is no longer any American Dream — the idea that if Americans work hard and contribute to the nation's productivity, they will be rewarded with a good life, including the ability to own a home, provide for a family, be secure from sickness and in retirement, and perhaps even take a vacation every once in a while.

From here

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