Posted on 10/24/2024 10:09:57 AM PDT by george76
Boeing factory workers voted Wednesday to reject the company’s latest contract offer and to continue a six-week strike that has halted production of the aerospace giant’s bestselling jetliners.
Local union leaders in Seattle said 64% of members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers who cast ballots voted against accepting the proposal.
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The labor standoff comes during an already challenging year for Boeing, which became the focus of multiple federal investigations after a door panel blew off a 737 Max plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
The strike has deprived the company of much-needed cash that it gets from delivering new planes to airlines. On Wednesday, the company reported a third-quarter loss of more than $6 billion.
Union machinists assemble the 737 Max, Boeing’s best-selling airliner, along with the 777 or “triple-seven” jet and the 767 cargo plane at factories in Renton and Everett, Washington.
The offer rejected Wednesday included pay raises of 35% over four years.
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Boeing has said that average annual pay for machinists is currently $75,608.
Boeing workers told Associated Press reporters that a sticking point was the company’s refusal to restore a traditional pension plan that was frozen a decade ago.
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Boeing hasn’t had a profitable year since 2018, and Wednesday’s numbers represented the second-worst quarter in the manufacturer’s history. Boeing lost $6.17 billion in the period ended Sept. 30, with an adjusted loss of $10.44 per share. Analysts polled by Zacks Investment Research had expected a loss of $10.34 per share.
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The company burned nearly $2 billion in cash, in the quarter, weakening its balance sheet, which is loaded down with $58 billion in debt. Chief Financial Officer Brian West said the company will not generate positive cash flow until the second half of next year.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
They weren’t impressed with the “sweetener” of adding free trips on the Boeing planes. Many are taking trains lately.
“The offer rejected Wednesday included pay raises of 35% over four years”
And 12% of it in the first year.
I was in the aviation maintenance industry for 37 years.....IIRC I never saw more than 3% in a year.
Turning down that proposal just sounds like raw greed to me.
I see big things in the future for Airbus. Airbus execs must be celebrating.
At this point I have come to conclusion the Boeing deserves to die. Maybe Musk should start building planes. I guarantee you those planes would be engineered better and be far more safe than the crap Boeing is putting out now. He would walk away from all the carbon fiber nonsense and develop a metal alloy that would far surpass costly carbon fiber junk.
The union is only asking for what inflation has stolen from them. I hope that they get it.
“Boeing has said that average annual pay for machinists is currently $75,608”
A 35% increase pushes that to around $102,000 a year.
KEEP it up long enough, and MUSK will be your new boss.
HE will buy Boeing for $1.
Inflation, Inflation, Inflation.
Boeing already has its share of problems. When they go belly up then these people will have no jobs. Maybe Boeing should just threaten to call it quits.
> The union is only asking for what inflation has stolen from them. <
You just might have a point. The government shamelessly lies and says inflation is only around 3%. So that’s the Social Security adjustment.
The union (and average folks in general) know what the real story is.
Companies are caught in the middle. They didn’t cause the inflation (DC did), but they have to deal with its effects. Unfortunately for the country, one way to deal with it is to move production overseas when possible.
The workers aren’t doing a very good job. Boeing products are substandard at this time. In a high risk product company that is unacceptable.
No more negotiations and sell off the company. I am sure the workers would love being unemployed and having to compete with fellow employees for other jobs. Stockholders would be very unhappy unless they were smart enough to bail on the failing company now.
IMHO
Airbus can’t keep up with the demand. Their A320 series waiting lists already stretch into the 2030’s.
Maybe Elon needs to buy the Boeing Commercial Aircraft division and cut all of the McDonnell Douglas thinkers out of the front office.
Live by the pillage, die by the pillage.
When the engineers who built a great company with a noble vision of making great airplanes ...
ceded that company to a cabal of bean counters who could not actually make anything of value, only money ...
they gutted the firm of its transcendent purpose. If leaders assert that money is all that matters, and you make it by cannibalizing the enterprise, folks lower on the rung take that message to heart.
Agree...Boeing is beginning to die....when the workers want a 35% raise over 4 years...it is making the chance of them having jobs very low in the future. The bean counters will move on with a very bad resume.
BBB
“Bye-Bye, Boeing!”
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer more craven bunch of sellout bean-counters.
(Remember when the Feds gave Boeing a pot of money to help out during COVID and the management went out and spentbit all on stock buybacks, that is, putting it into theirbown pockets?)
$75K seems like not enough to buy the very best machinists, which is probably why they have quality control issues.
I see a move of manufacturing to a “Right to work” State, or maybe to China.
These former employees are out of a job by their own choice, close it all down and move on.
I worked painting bridges for the State of WA. Of course they weren’t my employer, I worked for a contractor. We made about 70K, if we had enough jobs to give us 52 weeks of work. Of course making parts is a lot less safe, than working inside the explosive and non-breathable air inside the “tanks” holding up the actual roads. Other times, a machinists job is a lot more dangerous than being on a man life under the overpass, sandblasting, and painting them. Often with traffic underneath, although usually a couple of lanes away.
Can anyone sense the sarcasm here? Of course contractors rarely paid int a retirement plan. Then again, I had colleagues who were vested in other States in the Union, who moved to another State, and the Unions did not allow their time to vest into their retirement... read Teamsters and Carpenters Unions, to say nothing of Laborers Unions.
Boeing is a sweetheart gig, better than being a machinist for the plants building Aircraft carriers. Go back to work, or cry “I’M SORRY”....
YES the first paragraph made much usage of sarcasm.
Raw greed and/or something else.
Folks, who/what benefits if Boeing augers in...?
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