Union members at Boeing’s St Louis factories have at last voted to end the second-longest strike in the company’s history, closing an ordeal that has hobbled the production of the Pentagon’s air fleet. By a two-thirds margin and at the urging of the union leadership itself, the machinists agreed to the Seattle-based planemaker’s fifth offer, not including the offer the union unilaterally made on its own accord.
Three months of striking have won them a five-year contract that includes: a 24% pay increase (8% the first year and 4% per year after that), a $6,000 signing bonus, and more vacation and sick time, per the Missouri Independent and the Intelligencer. That’s not quite as much of a bump as the workers originally demanded, but it’s also more than Boeing’s first four offers. Negotiating! After three months off the job, and with the holidays around the corner, it seems like the union decided not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Work resumed on Sunday.
Defending our skies from the factory floor
Boeing’s St Louis operations are responsible for some of the company’s biggest defense products, including the new F-15EX as well as the venerable F/A-18 fighter jets, backbones of the U.S. Air Force and Navy respectively. The Navy’s new MQ-25 Stingray, an in-air refueling drone, is also made there. The upcoming F-47, the world’s first sixth-generation stealth fighter, will also be built in St Louis.
The strike has essentially halted work on all of these, making this as much a national security situation as a corporate drama. Welcome to the industrial-military complex. Thankfully that drama is over, and hard-working Americans can go back to defending the country at a good wage. It’s also good for Boeing to get yet another set of headlines behind it. The whole affair has brought some changes to the company, too: its vice president of labor relations, Mike Fitzsimmons, left Boeing mid-way through the strike, per Bloomberg. That said, it still has a long way to go before its reputation is fully restored.
