Strike grounds Boeing

[Scott Marshall <Scott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

**Strike grounds Boeing**

(Reprinted from the October 14, 1995 issue of the People's
Weekly World. Maybe reprinted or reposted with PWW credit.
For subscription information see below)

By Will Perry and Elizabeth Yates

SEATTLE -- The Boeing Company, the world leader in airplane
production, is shut down tight, as its 32,000 workers
launched a nationwide strike on Oct. 6 after rejecting, by
margin of 76 to 24 percent, a "final" company offer studded
with takeaways.

"It stinks," said one worker, succinctly expressing the
consensus of pickets contacted by the World.

The strikers are members of the International Association of
Machinists, some 25,000 of whom work in Boeing facilities in
the Puget Sound region of Washington State. Boeing also
employees more than 7,500 union members at its plant in
Wichita, Kansas and smaller numbers in plants near Portland,
Ore. and Spokane, Wash.

 They were angered by the multi-million dollar stock bonuses
that Boeing Chairman Frank Shrontz and other top officers
recently received, while at the same time, the company
offered the workers cuts in health care.

"I think the change growing in labor around the country is
reflected here," said Matt Bates, union spokesperson.

The union of engineers and technicians at Boeing immediately
expressed support for the Machinists' strike. Support was
also forthcoming from IAM President George Kourpias and from
John Sweeney, president of the Service Employees Union and
candidate for AFL-CIO president.

Since 1990 Boeing has raked in $6.6 billion in aggregate net
profit, despite the recent order downturn. Now orders are
piling up again, but the company complains that to compete
in the cutthroat world market, it must ship more jobs
overseas where wages are lower.

The union estimates that Boeing's proposed changes in the
medical plan could cost each worker conservatively over
$1,000 a year. Bates considers it "ironic" that Boeing is
trying to make draconian cuts in health care.

"They complain that their major competition comes from
Airbus in Germany where their employees are covered with a
national health program."

A tour of 18 picket sites in Seattle, Kent and Auburn during
the four to eight morning shift yielded a uniform response:
"Don't touch our medical coverage!"

After thousands of workers had responded to a sustained
company drive to encourage early retirement, the company's
final offer also included increased deductibles and out-of-
pocket expenses limits in retirees' medical coverage.

Pickets denounced this as "a low blow" and "a cheap shot,"
and pointed out that retirees can't vote on the contract.
Many senior workers nearing retirement were especially
irate.

Workers also resented the refusal of the company to make a
meaningful response to the union's number one issue of job
security. The work force in the Puget Sound area has been
cut from 39,000 in 1990 to 23,500 today through layoffs,
downsizing, subcontracting, and combining two or more jobs
into one.

Especially rankling is the company policy of off loading, or
contracting out, the manufacture of aircraft components to
(often non-union) contractors in Mexico, Poland, China and
Alabama. For example, the 145 workers who make insulation
blankets for commercial aircraft were praised last winter as
the most efficient workers in the fabrication division. A
month later, these workers were notified that the blanket
shop was being shut down and their jobs shipped to Mexico.

Now the company is driving to cut an additional $600 million
out of its manufacturing costs by additional off loading.
This would increase the percentage of Boeing aircraft built
by foreign and non-union suppliers to 52 percent.

The company's only response on job security and off loading
was a proposal to brief the union on its decisions semi-
annually instead of annually. On wages, the company offered
lump sum bonuses of 5 percent and 3 percent in 1995 and
1996, but no general wage increase until 1997, the final
year of the contract. Boeing's European rival, Airbus, pays
"significantly higher wages" than Boeing, the union says.

On pensions, the company proposed only to raise the basic
benefit from $35 to $37 per month per year of service --
substantially below the $40 recently negotiated by the union
at McDonnell Douglas -- Boeing's main U.S. competitor.  The
company pension fund is now above $9 billion -- "so rich
that the company didn't put a dime in it last year," an
Everett shop steward said.

"They thought we'd buy it. They told us it was 'fair and
equitable.' Well, we showed them it wasn't acceptable," Dave
Engle, president of Machinists Local Lodge 834 in Wichita,
told the World.
##30##


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