Workers have manned a picket line outside Boeing’s airplane factory in Renton, Washington, around the clock since tens of thousands walked off the job earlier this month. Almost two weeks into the strike, the largest now under way in the US, nobody knows when it will end.
Orlando, a quality inspector at the aerospace giant, arrived at 3.45am on Saturday, long before dawn. On the outskirts of a city as expensive as Seattle, the cost of living is “always going up”, he said. “And I guess the biggest part is making sure our wages reflect that.”
When Boeing tabled a new “best and final” offer on Monday, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAW) declined to put it to a vote ahead of a Friday deadline imposed by the company, complaining it had been “thrown at us without any discussion”.
Striking workers held up signs and waved to passing cars and trucks. Drivers whizzed by honking horns to show support, occasionally pulling over to chat with workers. A semi-trailer truck let off a loud blast from its horn drowning out all other sounds.
Orlando, 25, was among several workers who declined to give their full name for fear of retaliation when they return to work.
“We are feeling pretty good, and we feel that we have the strength,” said Maden, 39, a 12-year quality control employee at the Renton facility. He believes the public, by and large, is behind them.
“It looks like we always want money, but behind the scenes, it is a lot more than that,” Maden said. “I believe that the public is getting more understanding of why we are on strike and what has been done to us.”
Last weekend, workers brought along a portable charcoal barbecue and a poster with the cartoon likeness of Boeing’s former CEO Dave Calhoun grinning and carrying away stacks of $100 bills. “WE MAKE THEM BILLIONS THEY GIVE EACH OTHER MILLIONS,” it read.
Since the strike began on 13 September, Boeing workers have been taking one of six, four-hour shifts at the line outside its Renton plant. William Anderson, 44, a licensed mechanic, has been there almost every day.
The company he joined 17 years ago has lost its way, in his view. Workers are frustrated, he said, that senior managers and executives have been rewarded regardless of the company’s performance – while the benefits of more junior staff deteriorated.
“When I was hired people would hurt themselves just to get the interview to be part of Boeing,” Anderson said. “So, that culture is gone.”
Younger workers have been quitting for better offers elsewhere, he claimed. “The kids are not staying like they used to when they had incentives, like a pension and great benefits.”
‘Our members are angry’
Some 33,000 workers at Boeing walked off the job after members of the regional district of IAM overwhelmingly voted in favor of a strike after rejecting a tentative contract that proposed a 25% pay increase over four years.
Pickets have also been ongoing outside the Everett factory, which is one of the largest manufacturing buildings in the world. The strike also affects union workers in Oregon and California.
“I’m feeling really good,” IAM District 751 president, Jon Holden, said at the Renton picket line on Sunday. He said the union membership has been preparing for a strike for 10 years.
Although the union leadership recommended passage of the tentative contract, Holden said he didn’t believe members would accept it despite the wage boost and improvements to the health plan.
“We recommended it because it’s our job to get the best contract we could, and we couldn’t get any more and this was all we could negotiate short of a strike,” Holden said. “We have to turn it over to the real power, which is our membership, and they took it from there, so I’m proud of them.”
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Workers are seeking a 40% pay increase over three to four years and other benefits, including the restoration of pension plans.
Tensions between workers and Boeing have simmered since workers narrowly approved a contract extension in 2014 that transitioned union employees from pensions to a 401k. Healthcare costs were shifted on to workers and wages stagnated, Holden said.
“Our members are angry,” Holden added. “If this contract had been off of a good contract three years ago, it’d be a whole different story. But it wasn’t. It was off the worst contract we’d ever had, and so I wasn’t surprised.”
Machinists earn $75,608 per year on average, not including overtime, and that would have risen to $106,350 by the end of the proposed four-year contract, said a Boeing spokeswoman, confirming previous media reports.
The strike has halted aircraft production and is costing Boeing in a range of $50m to $100m each day, according to analysts. Boeing builds the 737 Max, P-8 and E-7 in Renton, and the 767 Freighter, KC-46 Tanker and the 777 and 777X wide bodies in Everett, the spokeswoman said.
In response to the strike, new company’s new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, announced a string of cost cutting moves last week, including rolling furloughs for nonunion employees.
Maden said workers are fighting as much for respect from upper managers as they are higher wages and pensions.
“We build quality aircraft, with a lot of lives depending on our work, so our input matters,” he said. “We deserve better pay, better respect, better pension and a better work policy.”
Most workers are prepared for a long strike, Maden added. “We knew for sure that Boeing would do something like this to us,” he said. “So, we have enough reserves for this hard time, and we are going to hold as long as it takes to make Boeing listen to us.”
Once his strike duty was over around 8am on Saturday, Orlando decided to stick around for two more hours to add to the picket’s numbers on a challenging morning to find volunteers.
He was still hopeful for a quick resolution that would equally benefit Boeing and its workers, “but I am prepared for the worst”.