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Boeing | (Photo: Reuters)
A strike at Boeing “could go on for a while” as workers are confident they can get bigger wage increases and an improved pension, union leader Jon Holden said in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) on Saturday.
More than 30,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), who produce Boeing’s top-selling 737 MAX and other jets in the Seattle and Portland, began a strike on Friday after overwhelmingly voting down a new contract.
Boeing and union negotiators are due to return to the bargaining table next week, in talks overseen by U.S. federal mediators, after more than 94 per cent of workers voted to reject an initial contract offer that Holden had endorsed.
Holden said the priorities for his members were a bigger wage increase and the restoration of a defined-benefit pension scheme that the IAM lost during a previous round of negotiations with Boeing a decade ago.
“We have the most leverage and the most power at the most opportune time that we’ve ever had in our history, and our members are expecting us to use it,” Holden told NPR.
“I know that our members are confident. They’re standing shoulder to shoulder and they’re ready. So it (the strike) could go on for a while.”
The initial deal included a 25 per cent pay rise spread over four years and a commitment by Boeing to build its next commercial jet in the Seattle region, if the plane program was launched within the four-year period of the contract.
Union members, venting frustration at years of stagnant wages and rising living costs, said removal of a performance bonus in the Boeing offer would erode half of the headline salary increase.
Boeing’s stock fell 3.7 per cent on Friday. It has tumbled almost 40 per cent so far this year, slashing the company’s market value by roughly $58 billion.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First Published: Sep 15 2024 | 11:39 PM IST
