Boeing Workers Are on the Verge of Striking
The Boeing contract for over 32,000 workers in Washington and Oregon expires next month, and workers have voted to sanction a strike. Their complaints include low pay, frozen pensions, and mismanagement that has resulted in deadly disasters for the company.
People hold signs for a yes vote as members and supporters of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751 attend an early strike-sanction vote event at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Washington, on July 17, 2024. (Jason Redmond / AFP via Getty Images)
Mondays and Wednesdays are loud at the vast Boeing factory in Everett, Washington. As the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers’ (IAM) contract campaign heats up, the workforce has been serenading management at lunch with air horns, train horns, and vuvuzelas — plus chants of “Out the Door in ’24.”
Forty miles south, in Renton, where workers construct the moneymaking 737, second-shift workers have used their meal breaks to blast Bluetooth speakers at top volume with ’90s rap, death metal, ’80s pop, and opera — all simultaneously, said Jon Voss, a thirteen-year mechanic in the wings building. The resulting racket “really drove management and HR nuts.”
The Boeing contract expires September 12 for 31,000 members of Machinists District Lodge 751 in Washington and 1,300 District W24 members in Gresham, Oregon. The last time a full contract was negotiated was 2008, with a fifty-eight-day strike.
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