A Boeing machinist and union member leads cheers during the "stop work meeting" and strike sanction at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, July 17, 2024
A STRIKE threatening to shut down aircraft production will be avoided, if a historical new contract between union negotiators and Boeing in the United States is rubber-stamped.
The 33,000 workers represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers would get pay raises of 25 per cent over the four-year contract, with average wages rising 33 per cent due to seniority step increases.
That is less than the 40 per cent the union had demanded during negotiations.
But the company agreed with a key union demand to build its next plane in Washington state, presumably by union members.
Workers also would get lump sum payments equivalent to £2,300 and a lower share of health care costs, Boeing said.
But the union would not achieve its demand to restore a defined-benefit pension plan that was eliminated in 2014.
Jon Holden, president of IAM District 751 at Boeing, said in a statement posted on the union website: “Negotiations are a give and take, and although there was no way to achieve success on every single item, we can honestly say that this proposal is the best contract we’ve negotiated in our history.”
Mr Holden said the union’s bargaining committee is recommending that members ratify the contract.
The president of Boeing’s commercial aeroplanes division, Stephanie Pope, said in a video for employees on Sunday that the proposed contract includes the company’s largest-ever general wage increase.
She said the promise to build Boeing’s next new airliner in the Puget Sound area means job security for generations to come.
The proposed contract depends on union members ratifying before midnight Thursday Pacific time, after which the union threatened to strike.
A strike would have added to the headwinds facing Boeing, which is hurtling toward a sixth straight money-losing year.
New chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, has just been hired to help reverse $27 billion (around £21bn) in losses since the start of 2019.
A walkout at Boeing would shut down Boeing’s aeroplane production.
An eight-week strike in 2008, the longest at Boeing since a 10-week walkout in 1995, cost the company about $100 million a day.
Before the tentative agreement was announced, experts estimate a strike at Boeing would cost the company around $3bn (£2.28bn).
Boeing remains one of the world’s two leading manufacturers of airline jets, forming a duopoly with Europe’s Airbus.
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