Boeing strike: bosses bruised, blindsided and on brink of crisis

“Oh no, the consequences of our own actions!”

Awww. Those poor bosses. They might have to make some hard choices; kind of like the people they employ who may have to choose between food or rent.

I realize airline mechanics make half decent money, but still. No sympathy (Edit: for Boeing, if that wasn't completely clear).

Now, a proverb a Russian I met early in my career told me: every man is the architect of their own hemhroids I swear the guy was the next Pushkin

When all powerful bosses who think they control everything and everyone realize who has the most power.

Good for the workers .... now watch government lackies step in to support big business.

Whatever happens it should show the country that solidarity matters ... hopefully it spreads everywhere else.

Boeing execs said they held nothing back. The union members took that to be threatening. I genuinely wonder how much profit was actually reserved and how much executive comp is still available to drop into the pool. To me, “holding nothing back” means the company genuinely cannot to fund anything else without going into the red. Holding nothing back means fat was cut, executive pay was reduced, and shareholders understand their dividends are gone because the people that make them money need to get some too. Holding nothing back means some rainy day assets are sold and corporate, non-union members experience some austerity (granted you have to remain competitive so as to not lose your value creators so you can’t cut everything or they’d leave; executives are almost never value creators so they can have austerity measures). Holding nothing back means jobs could be cut if more hardship appears.

Something tells me Boeing was holding stuff back with that offer. It could be all the deferred stock executives have or the lack of shareholder expectation management. Not sure! We’ll never know.

On the one hand, I am glad this is finally happening.

On the other hand, I am 99% certain my father, who's worked at variously the Everett and Renton plants his entire adult life, is continuing to be a scab, as he has also done his entire adult life.

Raised me on Rush Limbaugh, last I talked to him he was a Q Anon nut that believed Antifa did Jan 6th and Tom Hanks' son rapes and kills children for their adrenochrome.

The 1% uncertainty is not from a 1% chance he might actually also be striking, its the 1% chance he's either retired or died from a heart attack since I last spoke to him.

Either way, fuck Boeing.

Honestly, I won't hold it against IAM leader Holden too much. Boeing would stall and give shitty and completely worthless offers, then at the last minute double the largest point of contention (wage), so it looked fine from the lens of bargaining trade-offs.

Still, the workers are right to put this offer into the trash bin, sending a clear message to IAM leaders they have far more leverage, and to Boeing management that union members have lost all patience for their penny-pinching.

I hope they demand the resignation of the entire C suite

This is going to get complicated. I'm thinking for example that there may be some time sensitive items that are part of the building process and which would need to be restarted to be able to continue. Kind of like university classes, of you miss one they force you to pay for another year or quarter to take the class. There's gotta be stuff like glues, assemblies, safety checks, long lead items, etc that are gonna be painful to Boeing just to restart the process.

Does anyone have concrete info on the offer and why it was rejected? Reading between the lines, it sounds like some of the issues were:

• 24% is a lot, but doesn't bring them back to where they were 16 years ago when their last general wage deal happened
• Contract reduces or removes performance incentives, which might reduce take-home pay overall
• Some employees are mad that their pension was taken away a decade ago
• They don't trust Boeing to keep it's promise about building the next commercial jet in the region

Anything else?

Good.

How the fuck are the bosses blindsided by this? I read about this shit on the Internet days ago. It'll be cheaper to just pay them then fuck up your production lines and have to mitigate a PR disaster. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

The Reuters authors are far too generous to corporate leadership. No, the bosses weren't blindsided. No, the bosses weren't surprised. All of the demands and expectations are ones you would predict.

This kind of situation is exactly when strikes happen, and if anyone in management wasn't prepared for it, they're unqualified for their job. Or they're liars. Or both.

Boeing killed John Barnett