On October 31, news broke that 33,000 striking workers at aircraft manufacturer Boeing might—might—be going back to work after spending more than a month on the picket line. That day, the workers’ union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), announced that its negotiating team had extracted a new and improved contract proposal from the beleaguered company. The news was met with mixed reactions by the workers themselves, who chimed in on X and Facebook with exuberant memes and emojis. Some were strong yeses, while others were equally resolute nos. A vote was scheduled for November 4, the day before the U.S. presidential election. For those workers and their families, it was guaranteed to be one hell of a consequential week before even a single vote was counted.
The updated tentative agreement represented the latest chapter in a months-long saga that has seen thousands of manufacturing workers up and down the West Coast face off against a company that’s struggled to find its footing amid quality control issues, weakening profits, and a leadership shake-up. When they’re not on strike, these workers assemble Boeing’s popular passenger jets and freighters, including the 747, 767, and 777, and most work out of the company’s enormous Seattle-area facilities in Everett and Renton, Washington. By the time Boeing sent in its most recent proposal, the strikers had already voted down two others.
Union leadership recommended that the members vote to approve it, just as they’d done for the first one in September.
Members of IAM District 751 and District W24 first went on strike on September 13, the day after their ten-year contract with the company expired. Five days earlier, the union’s negotiators had announced a tentative contract agreement that many workers saw as disappointing, if not an outright slap in the face. Boeing worker Adam Vogel called it “a load of crap” in The Associated Press, adding, “We haven’t had a raise in sixteen years.” Nearly 95 percent of workers voted to reject the contract, and 96 percent voted to approve the strike.
“Every mechanic I’ve heard from, they are beyond pissed at what they view as a betrayal from the union,” Ky Carlson, an assembler at the Boeing facility in Everett, told Labor Notes on September 10. That tentative agreement had included a raise of 25 percent over four years, which may sound like a nice bump until one considers that Carlson and her co-workers have been laboring under the same contract for ten years. That contract was signed in 2008 after a nearly two-month strike, and then extended twice, most recently in 2014. The cost of living has increased significantly since then (though that didn’t stop the company from spending $38 billion on stock buybacks from 2014 to 2018).
Housing costs and groceries have particularly skyrocketed, and Boeing workers, especially those at the company’s Washington facilities, say that their paychecks have not kept pace with the rate of inflation. “Just over the last seven years, I’ve lost 23 percent of my buying power due to inflation,” one unnamed Boeing worker said in a More Perfect Union video. “The cost of planes have gone up, but our wages have not. It’s stagnated. I make 23 percent less money.”
“We get [cost-of-living adjustments] in our contract, but, like many formulas to calculate COLAs, they don’t keep up with the reality of the cost of living, especially in the Seattle area,” Boeing machinist apprentice Mylo Lang told Power at Work. “The cost of housing has gone up very disproportionately to whatever numbers they’re using to calculate our raises.”
Even the company seemed to realize that it had come in with too little, too late, saying in a statement, “The message was 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.”
That conciliatory tone soon evaporated as the strike went on—and Boeing and IAM kept slugging it out at the bargaining table. The union had asked for a 40 percent raise, which Boeing executives insisted was impossible. The company has been in shaky financial shape, reporting losses of at least $6.2 billion in the third quarter of 2024, and suffered several damaging blows to its reputation earlier this year. In January 2024, a Boeing 737 Max 9 Alaska Airlines jet lost a rear door plug midflight. The terrifying equipment failure went viral, and it didn’t help matters when Alaska Airlines and also United Airlines then reported finding “loose parts” on other 737s in their fleets.
In response, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that it would be auditing the Boeing 737 Max 9 production line and its suppliers, and taking a close look at restructuring the way quality control currently operates. Right now, Boeing and other manufacturers are allowed to self-certify their work, which workers say can cause serious production and quality issues (for example, the aforementioned door plug flying off several thousand feet in the air). Outsourcing and rampant cost-slashing measures like cutting inspections and moving some assembly work to a non-union facility in South Carolina have only added to the problem.
Unsurprisingly, Boeing’s strategy of pleading poverty failed to make much of an impact on workers’ resolve. “We’re supposed to be the best in the aerospace industry,” another unnamed Boeing mechanic told More Perfect Union. “They need to be paying their employees accordingly. They’re willing to pay all their executives. The upper crust makes all the money in the world, but yet the people who build the planes can’t. We’re just trying to make a wage to afford to be able to have a house and feed our families.”
Lindsey Wasson/AP
Bartley Stokes Sr., who has worked for Boeing for forty-sixe years, encourages other employees on strike to vote no on a new contract offer from the company at a voting location in the Angel of the Winds Arena in Everett, Washington, October 23, 2024.
The workers were well aware of the challenges the company faces, self-inflicted and otherwise, because they’re expected to bear the heaviest consequences. Boeing’s policy of mandating overtime was hugely unpopular, and the old contract allows for up to nineteen days straight without a break. Limiting mandatory overtime is another key demand for workers who have found themselves compelled to work punishingly long hours—or else. “You either show up to this place for seventy hours in a week, or you lose your job,” Lang told Labor Notes. “And that is not the way that we should operate in a free society.”
Money and hours weren’t the only issues fueling the strike. The workers wanted to turn back the clock to the most recent 2014 contract ratification, and regain something that they felt was ripped away from them under duress. After Boeing threatened to move production of its new planes, the members agreed to give up their pension plan. They grudgingly accepted a 401(k) as a substitute, but ten years on, the workers want their pensions back—and have been extremely clear about why. “The 401(k) program is gambling on our retirement,” Kat Kinckiner, a union steward and Boeing worker, told Texas Public Radio. “To take away the pension and not compensate us enough to cover it? It’s just another takeaway, and there’s nothing unreasonable about wanting it back.”
Pensions have become something of an endangered species among even the most heavily unionized industries. Most employers prefer to offer a 401(k) plan, which shifts the lion’s share of the financial risks onto the workers and removes the company’s responsibility to pay out guaranteed benefits. As one might imagine, workers tend to prefer pensions, especially in industries like manufacturing, where the physical wear and tear on a worker’s body can cause health issues in their retirement.
Pensions have been a headline issue in several recent major labor fights, including the United Auto Workers’ 2023 strike against the Big Three automakers. The UAW was unable to get its own pension plan reinstated, but did secure improvements to its members’ retirement benefits. Boeing dragged its feet on the pension question, but it remained top of mind for many strikers. IAM District 751 President Jon Holden characterized the loss of their pensions as “a wound that may never heal for many members.”
Ten years is a long time for a wound to fester, and it’s also an unusually long lead-up to a new contract fight. These Boeing workers have known for years that it may take another strike to win an acceptable contract in 2024, and have planned accordingly. “I knew it was coming for a long time,” Lang told Power at Work. “Many of us did. And I was able to put away a pretty significant amount of money, and I’m ready to weather a long fight if that’s what’s required. I’m happy to stay out here as long as it takes.”
Of course, a strike is difficult no matter the circumstances. IAM was providing strikers with $250 per week in strike pay, and some workers had to pick up side gigs or second jobs to make ends meet. But for those who have been around since 2014 or before and have spent time socking away funds in preparation, a month or two on the picket line wasn’t going to financially devastate them the way it otherwise might. Boeing, on the other hand, has been hit hard: The company has already lost $9.66 billion as a result of the strike, which has certainly earned its title as the most expensive work stoppage of 2024. The company recently announced layoffs of 17,000 workers, furloughed much of its white-collar staff, and froze production of its planes (save for the 787, which is assembled in South Carolina). It also cut off the strikers’ health insurance on September 30.
Federal mediators got involved, but were unable to reach a resolution between the two parties. On October 8, the company publicly accused IAM of making unreasonable demands “far in excess of what can be accepted if we are to remain competitive as a business.” Two days later, they filed an unfair labor practice charge against the union, insisting the IAM was not negotiating in good faith. Usually, it’s the other way around, with a union calling out an employer for bad faith bargaining, but this strike was nothing if not unconventional.
The situation became so strained—and so expensive—that Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su flew to Seattle to offer her assistance at the bargaining table. The union credits Su for breaking the deadlock and helping to get the two parties to a new tentative agreement, which was presented to the membership for a vote on October 20. The new proposal included a 35 percent wage increase over four years, which union leadership praised as an improvement but acknowledged still fell short. “We have prepared for years to bring this membership back to a position of power and leverage, and we are there tonight,” Holden stated that evening. “We have made tremendous gains in this agreement in many areas our members said were important to them. However, we have not achieved enough to meet our members’ demands.”
The members agreed with his assessment, voting down the proposal by 64 percent. A week later, an increasingly frantic Boeing came back with yet another new proposal. This time, the members had to consider a 43.65 percent compounded wage increase over the four years of the contract, plus a $12,000 ratification bonus, improvements to overtime rules, and a company 401(k) match increased to 100 percent of the first 8 percent contributed, alongside a 4 percent automatic company contribution, among other sweeteners. Notably, their pensions were still missing.
Union leadership warned that, having extracted blood from a stone, continuing the strike may cause its members more harm than good. “In every negotiation and strike, there is a point where we have extracted everything that we can in bargaining and by withholding our labor,” it said in an October 31 statement. “We are at that point now and risk a regressive or lesser offer in the future . . . . It is time for our members to lock in these gains and confidently declare victory. We believe asking members to stay on strike longer wouldn’t be right as we have achieved so much success.”
Ultimately, the decision was in the members’ hands—59 percent of them voted in favor of the new contract on November 4. That fairly small majority was still enough to ratify the agreement, and the former strikers began trickling back to work on November 6. “This agreement, with its record wage increases, retirement improvements, guaranteed productivity bonuses, and commitments by the company to keep production in Puget Sound, demonstrates what is possible when workers have a real voice on the job,” Acting Secretary Su said in a statement celebrating the new contract.
Another 41 percent of the membership voted against the tentative agreement, taking issue with its deficits or believing they could win bigger by staying the course. The Machinist Reform Action Committee (MRAC), an ad hoc committee of rank-and-file machinists, sprang up, and urged their co-workers to reject the latest proposal. Some of the issues MRAC highlighted included mandatory overtime (Boeing’s proposal cut down on the hated practice, but did not eliminate it), wage gaps between workers with different seniority levels, and delayed union membership for new hires. They also pointed out that the proposal fell short of the strikers’ major goal of restoring their lost pensions. “Let’s not be swayed by corporate tactics or the short-term promises of an insufficient offer,” a flyer urged. “Instead, let’s demonstrate our strength and commitment to building a better future for all.”
Contrary to those dissenting voices, the union’s leaders have hailed the new contract as a major victory. In a joint statement, Holden and Brandon Bryant, president of IAM District W24, said, “Through this strike and the resulting victory, frontline workers at Boeing have done their part to begin rebalancing the scales in favor of the middle class—and in doing so, we hope to inspire other workers in our industry and beyond to continue standing up for justice at work.”
It remains to be seen whether Boeing itself will be able to get its act together and find its way back into the black. Meanwhile, the people who actually keep the factories running and the planes flying can take pride in knowing that they’ve set an important example for workers across the country by fighting as hard as they did, and demanding as much as they won. For two months in 2024, 33,000 workers brought an aerospace giant to its knees, and that won’t be soon forgotten.