Boeing machinists go on strike after rejecting contract

One of Boeing’s largest unions overwhelmingly voted Thursday to strike, rejecting a tentative contract offer from the aerospace and plane maker in dramatic fashion.

More than 30,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers went on strike not long after the vote, hobbling airplane assembly at Boeing’s factories in the Seattle area. The work stoppages will also occur in Portland, Ore. and in southern California.

The machinists rejected the contract by 94.6 percent and 96 percent voted to strike.

On Sunday, the union's bargaining unit announced it reached a tentative agreement with Boeing after months of negotiations. “We recommended acceptance because we can't guarantee we can achieve more in a strike,” IAM 751 Union president Jon Holden wrote to workers. But it didn't take long for union members to begin complaining the proposal was not good enough.

The deal would have raised wages by 25 percent, lowered employees’ share of health care costs, and boosted retirement contributions by the company. In addition, Boeing promised that the company's next plane would be built at its facilities in the Pacific northwest — rather than at Boeing's non-unionized plant in South Carolina. But many rank and file union members were unhappy with the offer, which fell short of the 40 percent raise and pension changes that the union was seeking.

The strike comes at a difficult time for Boeing, which is already grappling with a safety crisis after a door plug panel blew out of a 737 Max jet in midair in January. That forced the company to slow production of its best-selling plane as it works to shore up quality control across its factories and supply chain, and rebuild trust with airlines, regulators and the flying public.

Before the vote, new Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg urged workers to approve the contract. “A strike would put our shared recovery in jeopardy, further eroding trust with our customers and hurting our ability to determine our future together,” Ortberg said in a letter to employees in Washington and Oregon.

After the strike authorization, Boeing released a conciliatory statement saying it's "clear that the tentative agreement we reached with IAM leadership was not acceptable to the members. We remain committed to resetting our relationship with our employees and the union, and we are ready to get back to the table to reach a new agreement.”

The last strike by Boeing machinists in 2008 dragged on for eight weeks, costing the company an estimated $2 billion.

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