Striking Boeing machinists agreed to a brand new contract on November 4, 2024. It was negotiated between their union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and the country's largest industrial aircraft manufacturer.
members of the union, generally known as IAMreceived a cumulative 43% wage increase over the subsequent 4 years, significant signing bonuses, increased company contributions to employees' 401k plans and a commitment from Boeing to construct its next plane within the Seattle area.
Workers had rejected two previous proposals, demanding higher wages, job security and a return to a conventional pension plan, before backing the third on the eve of Election Day.
Nearly 60% of the roughly 33,000 staff agreed to the contract, ending a strike that had dragged on for nearly seven weeks, crippling aircraft production and contributing greater than Boeing Losses of $6 billion within the last three months.
Boeing says so Machinists will earn a median of $119,309 per 12 months with this latest contractof $75,608 per 12 months.
I’m a professor who has done this Researched organized labor for 20 years. Since the Boeing machinists won much of their original demands, I see many similarities between this deal and the contracts that ended or prevented strikes at UPS and Detroit's big three automakers in 2023.
But it's not clear whether these sorts of union victories will proceed in President-elect Donald Trump's second administration. Based on his record and his rhetoricExpect Trump to make it harder for staff to affix unions and take other steps to weaken the facility of organized unions.
2 big differences
I also see two big differences between these previous contracts and what staff agreed to this time. First, the Boeing strike was more controversial.
By rejecting two previous collective bargaining agreements, staff expressed their anger and impatience not only with Boeing executives but in addition with their very own union. In September, the IAM presented one to its members Proposal described by the union as “the best contract we have negotiated in our history”. But 95% of union members disagreedrejected the agreement and 96% subsequently voted to authorize a strike.
It is rare for union members to overwhelmingly reject their leadership in this manner. And yet it happened again a month later. In late October, staff rejected one other proposal that IAM and Boeing representatives had agreed to, albeit by a smaller majority.
A key sticking point within the previous rounds of negotiations illustrates the second distinguishing feature of the machinists' strike. In 2013, the corporate asked staff to put off staff defined profit pensions.
Because the corporate threatened to maneuver production of a then-new aircraft out of the Seattle area if staff didn’t ratify the change, the rank and file reluctantly agreed to the proposal. You approved this contract by a tight margin in January 2014.
Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images
A battle cry
Restoring the lost pension plan became one Battle cry on this industrial dispute.
For weeks it seemed as if the machinists would reject any contract that didn’t provide for an outlined profit pension plan. These plans guarantee staff a certain quantity of cash during their retirement years. Companies are liable for ensuring that they’ve sufficient funds to cover costs.
These plans were commonplace within the mid-Twentieth century. Defined profit plans are extremely rare today. They have largely been replaced by defined contribution planslike 401ks.
Defined contribution plans shift the danger transferred to the worker upon leaving the employer's balance sheet. Employers are only required to contribute a certain quantity to their employees' retirement accounts each pay period. These plans are likely to be inexpensive to manage and fewer dangerous for employers.
This helps explain why The proportion of Americans enrolled there has skyrocketedwhile the proportion of staff with defined profit pension plans has declined sharply.
Long-term trends
In other recent labor disputes, unions demanded a restructuring of the corporate's pension plans, but dropped the demand as negotiations progressed. The demand for a conventional pension serves kind of as a basis for negotiations.
But with the Boeing dispute, demand emerged way more serious. In the tip, the corporate didn’t budge on the difficulty, even though it agreed to extend its contributions to employees' individual retirement accounts.
Had Boeing restored its defined profit plan, it might have stood alone in comparison with other large employers facing labor disputes — bucking a decades-long trend of corporate cost-cutting strategies. The refusal to achieve this probably helps explain the numerous minority of staff who voted against the ultimate proposal.
Although the strike was controversial and the corporate was unwilling to conform to the entire staff' major demands, the strike at Boeing – one in every of the most important – was the strike most costly labor disputes within the US in 1 / 4 century – shall be remembered as one other victory for organized labor these years of resurgence of labor.
But these contract wins at Boeing, UPS, General Motors and the opposite two major automakers in Detroit and beyond show the boundaries of organized labor's power today.
These staff belong to unions that were formed many years ago, and so they have received higher wages and a lot better advantages through collective bargaining over latest contracts. However, increasing the variety of U.S. staff represented by unions stays difficult.
The share of U.S. staff who belong to a union continues to say no and can fall to 10% of the labor force in 2023.
As Joe Biden, probably most of all Worker-friendly president since Franklin Delano Rooseveltleaves the White House and Donald Trump's team prepares to re-enter, I imagine the prospects for union membership growth within the near future appear extremely bleak.
image credit : theconversation.com