Boeing Strike

[180ToTheMarker]

Boeing Statement: Renegotiation Fails; Strike Called
Friday September 5, 7:14 pm ET
SEATTLE, Sept. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Boeing (NYSE: BA - News) issued the following statement after mediated talks with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers concluded today without reaching agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement, covering nearly 27,000 employees mainly in Washington, Oregon and Kansas:
"Over the past two days, Boeing, the union and the federal mediator worked hard in pursuing good-faith explorations of options that could lead to an agreement. Unfortunately the differences were too great to close," said Scott Carson, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.
The IAM has called for a strike to begin at 1201 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 6. Boeing operations in Washington, Oregon and Kansas will remain open. Employees who are not represented by the IAM are expected to report for work as normal.
During the work stoppage, Boeing will support its customers and their airplanes in service. The company will continue delivering airplanes that were completed prior to the strike, and will continue providing customers with spare parts. Boeing does not intend to assemble airplanes during the strike.

 

[Dirty Sanchez]

Must be nice for a working group to actually have the bargaining power of a strike.

 

[Baze]

More power to them!

 

[flaps30]

unlike airline pilots, they have the balls to strike. Comair was the last US airline pilot strike we will ever see, and Mccain will make sure of this. just watch...

 

[captairbusbb]

Gosh, golly, and jeepers..........

If USAPA and Lee Seeham were there to save the day, maybe a strike could have been averted!!

 

[AA717driver]

Boeing Machinists aren't governed by the RLA.

We're either going to have to do a widespread illegal job action or become indentured servants. TC

 

[imacdog]

unlike airline pilots, they have the balls to strike.

You mean legal authority, right?

 

[Jetjockey]

Don't worry, If McCain is is elected he will fight union bosses. This out of his own mouth from his convention speech.

 

[27 driver]

Does this mean that anyone flying a Boeing product is a SCAB.


Just kidding.

I couldn't resist.

 

[CaptJax]

Talks Fail; Machinists Strike

Contract talks fail; machinists strike Boeing Co.

By MANUEL VALDES, Associated Press Writer

Saturday, September 6, 2008

(09-06) 06:43 PDT Everett, Wash. (AP) --

Boeing Co. machinists walked out on strike Saturday after contract talks arbitrated by a federal mediator failed to produce an agreement.
About 100 union members hoisted their strike signs at 12:01 a.m. outside the Boeing plant in this city north of Seattle, cheering and blasting air horns at passing cars, many of which honked back.

"It's been about lack of respect," said Steve Morrison, 42, a tester at the Everett plant. "They always tell us we're valued much but labor is the first out the door, the first to be outsourced."

This is the machinists' second strike in as many contract negotiations with Boeing. They struck for 24 days in 2005.

The machinists assemble Boeing's commercial planes and some key components. Key strike issues include pay, outsourcing, retirement and health care benefits.

The company said it would not try to assemble planes during the strike.

Boeing spokesman Tim Healy said the company is open to further discussion, but both sides were too far apart to reach an agreement. No additional talks were scheduled.

Union members voted to strike on Wednesday, but both sides agreed to a 48-hour contract extension — requested by Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire and a federal mediator. However, negotiations failed Friday and the strike was on.

The union bargains for about 25,000 workers in the Puget Sound area, 1,500 in the Portland, Ore. area and about 750 in Wichita, Kan.

"We're not greedy, we just want a piece of the pie," said Scott Daniels as he helped make picket signs late Friday. "They offer us bonuses. We don't want bonuses." Machinists want an improved 401k and improved vacation, he said.

Analysts have said a strike could cost Boeing about $100 million per day in deferred revenue. During the last strike, Boeing was unable to deliver more than two dozen airplanes on schedule.

Boeing's commercial airplane manufacturing operation, based in the Seattle area, has led a resurgence by the company over the past two years amid heavy orders for its much-awaited and increasingly delayed 787 Dreamliner aircraft.

Overall, the company reported in July a backlog of airplane orders worth $346 billion.

Asked why he thought a strike would be effective, Eras Gattshall, a 47-year-old aerospace mechanic in Everett, replied, "Boeing is its best financial shape in years. All we're asking is a fair wage."

Gattshall has been with Boeing for 12 years but has been laid off twice.

Tom Wroblewski, president of Machinists District Lodge 751, declared in a statement Friday that Boeing had "disrespected the finest aerospace workers anywhere on the planet" by failing to meet machinists' expectations.

In a last-ditch attempt to avoid a paralyzing strike, negotiators for the aerospace giant and the union had jetted off to a Disney resort in Florida, in part so Tom Buffenbarger, International Association of Machinists international president, could participate. He was at the resort for an IAM convention.

"Over the past two days, Boeing, the union and the federal mediator worked hard in pursuing good-faith explorations of options that could lead to an agreement," Scott Carson, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said Friday in a statement. "Unfortunately the differences were too great to close."

Boeing operations in Washington, Oregon and Kansas will remain open, Carson said. Employees, such as engineers, who are not represented by the Machinists are expected to report for work as usual, he added.

Boeing's "best and final" three-year contract offer included bonuses totaling at least $5,000 and averaging $6,400, raises averaging 11 percent, pension increases and a 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment — $34,000 in average pay and benefit gains per employee, according to the company.

The average Boeing machinist earns $27 an hour, or about $56,000 a year, before overtime and incentives.

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

I love a good ol fashion legal job action....

we just need to make more easy! Obama!

 

[Ocity]

Does this mean that anyone flying a Boeing product is a SCAB.


.

Yes, it does.

 

[IXLR8]

unlike airline pilots, they have the balls to strike. ...

Except for NWA guys....they'll strike...

 

[CaptJax]

Lrngthy Boeing Strike Could Harm U. S. Exports

Lengthy Boeing strike could harm US exports

By TIM KLASS, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

(09-09) 04:05 PDT Seattle (AP) --

If the Boeing strike drags on for more than three months, there could be long-lasting harm to the country's exports, economists said.

By dollar value, Boeing Co. ranks among nation's top industrial exporters. Exports are one of the few bright spots in the nation's economy. But that could change if the walkout runs beyond three months and customers are spooked, eventually turning to Chicago-based Boeing's European rival, Airbus S.A.S., for future orders of commercial passenger and cargo jets.

Few expect the strike to last that long. Besides, analyst Cai von Rumohr at Cowen and Co. noted on Monday that Airbus has a four- to seven-year backlog and thus is in no position to take any of Boeing's orders in the near term.

The last two strikes by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers at Boeing's commercial aircraft operations lasted 24 days in 2005 and 69 days in 1995. The latter was the longest at Boeing since a 140-day strike in 1948.

In general, Boeing receives about 50 percent to 60 percent of the purchase price on delivery, the rest coming earlier in payments negotiated separately with each order, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president and analyst for the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. List prices range from $50 million to $57 million for a 737-600 to $285.5 million to $300 million for a 747-8.

Boeing failed to deliver more than two dozen planes on schedule during the walkout three years ago. This time, with about a seven-year order backlog and a scheduled delivery rate of more than 40 planes a month, the company stands to lose $100 million to $110 million a day in deferred revenue by most analysts' estimates.

"If it's a month long, you'll definitely see a blip" in trade gap figures, Aboulafia said. "Two months isn't the end of the world ... ."

But he said four months would make customers wonder, "'Why can't they settle it? What's going on?'"

Even in the economy of the greater Seattle area, home to 25,000 of the 27,000 electricians, painters, mechanics, riveters and other hourly production workers represented by the Machinists, a one-month strike "really has a negligible impact," said Dick Conway of Dick Conway & Associates, an economist and regional economic forecaster.

Up to three months or so, Conway said, buyers are likely to cut Boeing the same kind of slack the manufacturer has shown in accepting delays and renegotiating terms for airlines during severe downdrafts in air travel.

As of Monday, Boeing spokesman Tim Healy and Connie Kelliher, a spokeswoman for Machinists District Lodge 751 in Seattle, said both sides were ready to resume negotiations at any time, but no talks were scheduled.

Union members voted 80 percent on Wednesday to reject Boeing's last contract offer and 87 percent to go on strike the next day. Both sides agreed to extend the old contract for 48 hours in a last-ditch bargaining effort with a federal mediator at the table.

The strike began Saturday morning after that deadline expired without an agreement.

Peter Morici, an international business professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, said revenue — and exports — lost during the strike will be made up once the walkout is settled and aircraft deliveries resume, much as workers will again be receiving regular paychecks.

"It only delays the exports unless it continues so long that they lose orders" for aircraft in the future, Morici said. "It takes a long time before that affects the balance of trade."

Airbus also has strong unions that have shown no hesitation to strike, waging a number of protest walkouts over issues ranging from disparate treatment of French and German workers in April to unhappiness with drastic cuts in bonuses a year earlier.

"Unless Airbus can offer itself as a more reliable performer, the strike is not going to make a lot of difference," Morici said.

The strike's impact on exports will likely be considerably less than from Boeing's continued outsourcing of work formerly done by the Machinists to subcontractors, particularly foreign companies, a key issue in the walkout, said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the University of California Labor Center in Berkeley.

"Removing jobs permanently from the area — that has a much more serious long-term impact," Jacobs said.

While there is no research to show conclusively when the economic damage from a strike becomes more long-term than short-term, "you just don't see any long-term economic impact" from the last two Boeing strikes, Jacobs said.

 

[1st Rate]

All the more power to the machinists!!!

 

[CaptJax]

Strike Puts 787 Delivery to Japan On Hold

Strike puts 787 delivery to Japan on hold again

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

(09-30) 04:27 PDT TOKYO, Japan (AP) --

Delivery schedules for Boeing's repeatedly delayed 787 mid-sized jet are now up in the air because of a strike that has shut down production, the manufacturer's executives said Tuesday.

Japan's All Nippon Airways Co. is scheduled to be the world's first customer for the 787 next-generation jet, which has already been postponed three times and by nearly two years from the original schedule.

The latest schedule had put its delivery for August next year. But a strike by U.S. workers including electricians, mechanics and painters is threatening to cause a further delay.

"We do not know when it will end," Boeing Vice President Randy Tinseth said of the strike, which began Sept. 6. "Only when it's over can we develop a production schedule."

The 787 jet is also important for Japan because the nation's major manufacturers, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, are making key components for the jet, which is being assembled in the U.S.

However, the aircraft has been delayed several times by production glitches, partly because it is breaking new ground, including developing innovative material to replace the usual aluminum for jets, according to Boeing.

The new, lighter material is designed to help make the jet more fuel efficient, an increasingly attractive feature because of soaring fuel prices.

Boeing Japan President Nicole Piasecki said it was too early to determine the possible negative effects of the strike but said other preparations for the 787 for Japan were going well.

"It is absolutely essential and a top priority for Boeing, for our customers and for our partners to conclude this strike as soon as possible," she told reporters. "But at the same time, we have to do so under terms that preserve the long-term competitiveness of our aircraft."