Ten Years Later Boeing Workers Faced With Same Battles. A Different Approach is Needed.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

9-12-24

 

In November 2013 Boeing workers’, members of IAM District Lodge 751 AFL-CIO, rejected a contract with deep concessions by a 67% to 33% margin.  One of the main reasons for this rejection was Boeing’s efforts to freeze pensions as the company moved from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution savings plan.

 

This was a bold move by the Boeing workers and I wrote at the time:

“By rejecting that contract, IAM members were standing in the forefront of the struggle not only to defend their benefits and jobs, but the future for all workers, particularly young workers entering or new to the workforce.”

 

Yet a month later, January the third 2014, these same workers voted to accept these drastic concessions by a 1% margin.  What happened in just over a month?

 

What happened was Boeing bosses went on the offensive with a campaign of terror aimed at forcing Boeing workers to back off. They threatened to move production to non-union plants in the US South and openly submitted bids to other states. This, despite Boeing already receiving $9 billion in subsidies from Washington taxpayers. The big business media added its efforts to the terror campaign.

 

Throughout the month all the politicians in one-way or another pressured the workers and claimed the state’s future is doomed if they didn’t take concessions. Jay Inslee, the lawyer and Washington State’s Democratic governor hailed the acceptance of the January deal along with Boeing execs.

 

Tom Buffenbarger, the IAM, International President at the time and other national officials forced this vote over the objections of the local leadership. As staunch defenders of profits and the market, they took up the baton under what were really conditions of warfare, and, forced the January vote on a contract that had already been rejected and that the local leadership opposed. The month-long war of terror inflicted on the Boeing workers took its toll and they got their “yes” vote, but only barely. "We missed it by one per cent because people were confused and worried about their jobs,” one worker said, “I’m still just numb,” said another.

 

Here we are a decade later and Boeing workers, the same members of International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 751, will be voting on a new contract today, September 12^th 2024. If they reject the contract 33,000 of them could be off the job by midnight.

 

Boeing, and no doubt the leaders of the IAM who are supporting the contract (they never have to work under them), are hoping a 25% wage increase over four years (workers want 40%) will sway the vote in the company’s favor. I am pretty sure that Boeing’s “commitment” to future investment in the Puget Sound region won’t hold much water. We know that market forces and profits trump any commitment big business gives to working people. Biden forced railway workers to accept a contract they had already declined by getting emergency legislation through Congress that took the right to strike away from them in order to protect the railroad bosses’ profits.

 

But the big issue is the pension that was lost previously is not returned in this contract; it is this that might bring a “no” vote.

 

"We recommended acceptance because we can't guarantee we can achieve more in a strike," John Holden, IAM president says. Naturally, nothing can be guaranteed but success or failure is dependent on what strategy and tactics Holden, the leadership of the IAM and the leadership of the AFL-CIO, particularly in the Seattle area and Washington State, intend to bring to the game.

 

Holden went on to say, to his members, "But that is your decision to make and is a decision that we will protect and support, no matter what."  This is standard procedure from the labor hierarchy and a bit of a trick.

 

Holden would support the decision, that’s what democracy is all about. So if the workers’ reject the contract, vote to strike and fail to attain their goals, it’s down to them. Holden and the leadership are supporting the members’ right to vote on the strike. If it fails, it’s not on the leadership’s head. They warned them. They said they should accept the offer that doesn’t restore the pension. Holden is coming from a position of weakness and the bosses know it.

 

This is standard fare and I have had many conflicts with the way Labor Notes and other labor publications and groups, (DSA for example) that report on these labor disputes, or class battles to be more accurate.  Chris Brooks, who writes or wrote for Labor Notes, reported on organizing campaigns by the UAW in the South and referred to the “union’s” failed strategy or tactics. But tactics are not developed by the “the Union” they are developed by the leadership of the union and in this case we are referring to the IAM.

 

Holden and the national union leadership do not have a winning strategy. They have at best an organized retreat strategy. In addition, every top union official from Liz Schuler on down supports the Team Concept, the view that workers and bosses have the same interests, are on the same team. This has been a disaster for workers and at the heart of the leadership’s class collaboration.

 

The Team Concept is being played here as the new CEO of Boeing, Kelly Ortbeg’s letter to workers yesterday shows. "A strike would put our shared recovery in jeopardy, further eroding trust with our customers and hurting our ability to determine our future together," he wrote. “Ortberg and Boeing Commercial Airplanes boss Stephanie Pope hit the floor at the company's jet assembly plants in Everett and Renton this week to talk with workers about the proposed deal.” Reuters reported. They’re worried.

 

“Our shared recovery”? That’s a good one. It reminds me of the old Lone Ranger joke, “What do you mean we white man”. The situation is very similar. Tonto said that to the Lone Ranger when they were surrounded by “hostile Indians” the Boeing workers are surrounded by hostile bosses, their mass media, their courts, their police and a leadership that wants us all to just get along.  A workers future and the CEO or investors future have nothing in common, we do not travel along the same road.

 

Boeing over the years has spent millions bribing politicians in Congress as well as influencing politicians and US diplomats. It’s estimated the company has earned $50 billion to $100 billion in revenue from sales to Israel.

 

On top of it all, the Boeing management as we know, has been mired in corruption and graft. The biggest example is the 737 Max airplane, two of which crashed killing hundreds of people. Boeing has been forced to dole out over $4 billion in fines and penalties. Boeing workers had no role in this. The CEO before Ortbeg who took the job last month, was Dave Calhoun who received $22.5 million compensation in 2022 and $15 million in shares in 2023 despite the state of the company.

 

A Strategy That Can Win

As we saw with Biden’s breaking of the railroad strike, the Boeing workers are up against it; a leadership that has no real plan for winning the fight and all the forces of big business including the Democrats against them. But objectively we have the power, but in today’s climate no individual unions, even powerful ones in major industries can defeat the combined forces of big business.

 

Any strike must appeal openly to other unions to join in with actions of some kind. Working class communities must be drawn in to the struggle much like in the Hormel strike back in the 1980’s. We all have the same desires and demands.; our families are dependent on our conditions at work. We have to make these battles more openly class battles. The employers don’t hesitate to do that. We have to appeal to the unemployed and under employed through calling for a shorter workweek with no loss in pay to create jobs.

 

Over the past decades we have seen working class people being priced out of a university education and public education is in an extreme crisis and teachers under assault from all directions. Educators in 2018 and 2019 showed us we can violate the anti-union laws and win. They showed what has to be done to counter the capitalist offensive and we must build on that. Unions and all workers in disputes on the job must link them to social issues and campaigns; our most powerful weapon is our power on the job.

 

There are laws against class solidarity in action. All that is supported are harmless acts of solidarity, picket lines that are 24-hour gatherings nothing more, and protests that do not disrupt production and profit taking. We have to start from the position that we will organize mass picketing and actions that challenge and violate anti-labor, anti-worker laws. A start must be to publicly campaign against the Team Concept relying instead on our own strength on the job and breaking the disastrous death marriage the present trade union leadership has with the Democratic Party.

 

If the Boeing workers choose to strike today, I hope that the action gets back the pension they lost. Regardless of the outcome, defensive battles are not enough. Boeing is a major US corporation and rank and file workers should call for Boeing to be taken in to public ownership as a first step toward workers’ control and management of this vital industry. The state of this corporation, the deaths due to plane disasters, the cover up, the lies; this is the legacy of the private production. The private sector is incapable of managing and should not own, the forces that produce the necessities we need in society.

Bosses waged economic terrorism against Boeing workers.

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

"Brethren we conjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable.  Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves.  It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich."

1840's appeal from New England laborers  Foner History of the Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192

In November of 2013 Boeing workers’ members of IAM District Lodge 751 AFL-CIO rejected a contract with deep concessions by a 67% to 33% margin. A major issue was pensions.  Boeing bosses were demanding the freezing of pensions and other concessions as they moved workers from a defined benefit plan to a defined-contribution savings plan. We have seen this trend throughout organized Labor and the potential of  these heavy battalions of the labor movement, the auto and aircraft workers to harm profits and destabilize the US economy is well known; they have to be dealt with from the bosses’ point of view.

By rejecting that contract, IAM members were standing in the forefront of the struggle not only to defend their benefits and jobs, but the future for all workers, particularly young workers entering or new to the workforce.

The bosses were not pleased. In the world of global capitalism, US workers have to become more competitive if US capitalists are to stay ahead of the pack and keep profits rolling in; we need to be brought more in line with the Koreas and Brazils as one industrialist once said. Boeing bosses were not alone in their concerns.  The Union hierarchy atop the IAM and organized Labor in general has the same worldview as the boss; profits are sacrosanct, the market and capitalism must be defended. They endorse the Team Concept, the view that workers and bosses have the same economic interests, profits come first, sacrifices have to be made-----by workers of course.

Yesterday, January the third 2014, these same workers voted to accept these drastic concessions by a 1% margin.  What happened in just over a month?

What has happened is what always happens when the bosses are faced with that first line of resistance, the rejection of a concessionary contract.  What is really a gang composed of Boeing execs, aircraft industry bosses and politicians----- in this case representing the Democratic Party, one of the capitalist’s two major parties------and the union hierarchy got together and orchestrated a major assault on the Boeing workers and their families. They have waged a terror attack of immense proportions. This existed before last month’s rejection but went full steam ahead after it.

Leading up to this contract Boeing bosses had been threatening to move production to non union plants in the South if the Seattle Workers didn’t buckle under.  As they always do, they blackmail our communities, forcing localities to offer free land, low or no taxes, and other concessions in order to keep jobs there.  Boeing had already received $9 billion in subsidies from Washington taxpayers. After November’s rejection, Boeing bosses openly submitted bids to other states as the war against Boeing workers intensified.

Workers were now faced with a full-scale onslaught by the bosses’, their media, their politicians and their allies in our movement, the heads of organized labor.  The leaders of the IAM International Union forced yesterday’s vote on a contract that had already been rejected and that the local leadership opposed. The month long war of terror inflicted on the Boeing workers took its toll and they got their “yes” vote, but only barely.

"We missed it by one per cent because people were confused and worried about their jobs,” one worker said, “I’m still just numb,” said another.

"I think people that voted for it were scared," one worker was quoted by AP as saying, "The pressure

from the politicians and the community — people are scared about not having good-paying Boeing jobs.”  There is reason to be scared but more reason when you are faced with a powerful combination of the bosses’ and your own leaders. That yesterday’s contract passed by a small 1% margin shows the potential for a real fight back, an offensive of our own to drive back the assault of the 1% and their politicians on our standard of living.

In times like these, those who claim to be our friends are exposed as the treacherous enemies they are. All the politicians in one-way or another pressured the workers, claimed the state’s future is doomed if they didn’t take concessions. Jay Inslee, the lawyer and Washington State’s Democratic governor hailed the deal along with Boeing execs. "The tough vote taken by the Machinists today means the 777X will be built in the only place it should be, by the only people prepared to deliver,", Washington State Senator, Patty Murray, a Democrat, told the Associated Press.

Tom Buffenbarger, the IAM, International President forced this vote over the objections of the local leadership.  These people are enemies of the working class, class traitors. The contract length is 8 years and Buffenbarger, like his Democratic Party colleagues, boasts of the impact this will have on the economy of Washington for, "For decades to come, the entire region will benefit from the economic activity and technological innovations that will accompany" he tells the Associated Press. He has learned the art of propaganda well from his business friends.

The local leadership can be commended for opposing the contract but that is not enough as I explained in the previous blog.  "Our members have spoken and having said that, this is the course we'll take," Jim Bearden, a spokesperson for IAM District Lodge 751 told the media.  He added that, Boeing production workers "faced tremendous pressure from every source imaginable." He took a dig at "the politicians and the media, and others, who truly didn't have a right to get into our businesses, were aligned against us and did their best to influence our folks' votes."

 Bearden was right to take a dig at our enemies.  But more than a dig is needed; they will always be in “our business” and they will always use their media and all sorts of terroristic threats and means to influence what we do and how we think. The mass media has never been neutral always biased against workers, it always has and always will, the same folks that own Boeing own the mass media.

What Is To Be Done?

The local IAM leadership who have been undermined by the class collaborators atop the IAM must openly condemn the traitorous role played by the union hierarchy. They are not alone.  We saw the same during the ILWU’s Longview struggle, the same with the grain silos, and the same with the BART strike here in the Bay Area and the UFCW battles including the 2003 grocery strike.

The heads of the UAW have played the same role undermining and crushing any resistance to the auto bosses’ assault on their members that lifted its head among the ranks. In Cleveland NC the UAW leadership helped the bosses terminate leaders of a local that struck to defend their members.  

Back in the 1980’s we saw a serious attempt by sections of the US labor movement to counter the bosses’ offensive, Hormel, Eastern Airlines, Greyhound, Teamsters, these too were driven back with the help of the leaders of the international unions and the AFL-CIO.

The labor hierarchy does not represent our interests; they represent the interests of those that Bloomberg just announced yesterday have increased their wealth more than $500 billion last year. Three hundred individuals have accumulated $3.7 trillion in wealth and the richest one of them lives in Washington State. As they say in today’s language, WTF!

There are thousands upon thousands of union rank and file members and local leaders who have attempted to halt this offensive, this slide in to pauperism. They fought heroically and lost thanks to the like of Buffenbarger. Many of them simply gave up, became demoralized, found another path in life through no fault of their own. They had and have nowhere to go. In the nineteen eighties there were attempts to build a national movement, I remember attending some of these efforts myself like the defunct Rank and File Against Concessions.

I appeal to those leaders of Boeing’s IAM Local who opposed this contract to move to change the course of US labor history and the balance of class forces in the USA. I appeal to these brothers and sisters to collectively and openly condemn the IAM International President Buffenbarger and his executive board for their collaboration with the 1% in the destruction of a standard of living that took decades of heroic sacrifice and struggle to win.  There is no guarantee of decent jobs in the capitalist world, Buffenbarger just handed the future of our youth over to the 1%.

I appeal to them to use the media to our advantage as best we can and reach out to their own members and the numerous other unions where dissenters and genuine fighters have come up against the bosses and our own leaders as they attempted to stem the concessionary tide.  

A call should be out out for a national conference to declare the end to the assault on US workers and our communities and to build a national movement to fight back.  An appeal should be made to all workers, union and non-union to come to it. Throughout the country there are isolated battles and new developments like the election of a socialist to Seattle city Council, the success of her colleague in Minnesota, the election of independent union candidates in Ohio. The election of Kshama Sawant, a socialist to Seattle City Council is very important and Sawant should be approached to join in these efforts, she is the only politician that has offered an alternative to defeat, that Boeing workers take over the plant in some form of “democratic ownership”. Read more here.

An isolated local or group of workers cannot defeat the forces against us; we must have a national movement of our own. We cannot win, worker against worker, state against state, region against region. Jobs and a living for all is a minimum requirement for a decent life. A special appeal should be made to those who have fought and lost to bring their experience and skills to it. Most of the workers in our jails would not be there were an alternative available.

The workers that voted for this contract at Boeing saw no way forward, no force that they can turn to that could counter the offensive of the 1% and the labor hierarchy.  Jim Bearden, the IAM spokesperson said that his “members have spoken.” But they have not spoken. They were threatened, terrorized and coerced; the vote was illegitimate, as illegitimate as the captive of a terrorist group’s confession with blindfolded captors behind him holding machetes.

It is a betrayal of those that fought before us and especially of the youth of the future if we continue to allow this situation to continue. We have no alternative but to fight.

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It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow--the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more...Nothing that this nation, or any other nation, has done in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must be done to make people accept this reality.  Business Week 10-12-74.

Boeing workers reject union. Whose fault is that? Not theirs.

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The IAMAW (International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers) suffered a stunning defeat at the Boeing factory in Charleston South Carolina as workers voted against joining a union.  The turnout was strong with 2,828 of approximately 3000 workers eligible to vote doing so and 2,097 voting against according to The Post and Courier.

The defeat comes after a unionization drives failed at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga Tennessee in 2014 (see UAW leadership responsible for the defeat at VW) and production and maintenance workers at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco in North Carolina in 2011. South Carolina is also a Right-To Work state which is undoubtedly a hurdle but by no means an insurmountable one. 

One of the so-called labor experts, more often than not academics that give an intellectual legitimacy to the labor hierarchy’s disastrous policies, pointed out that this was an opportunity for the union as favoritism was prominent at the plant and talks of layoffs and cutbacks, “…had given the IAM its best shot at gaining a foothold.”.

The IAMAW’s goals were addressing favoritism and inconsistency, “…fairer evaluations, more consistent work instructions, and higher wages for production and maintenance workers in South Carolina…” according to the New York Times

Why would these workers vote against a union, against their own self- interest some might say?

Perhaps the most anti-worker answer to that question comes from Dave Macaray, a former union staffer who writes regularly for the liberal online magazine, Counterpunch.  As is usually the case with former staffers and other liberal types who write on labor issues, the role of the labor hierarchy, not only their refusal to fight in any serious way but their outright class collaboration, is completely missing in Macaray’s report on the election today. Instead he blames the rank and file:

“So before these non-union South Carolinian Boeing workers congratulate themselves on their self-reliance and old-fashioned American “individualism,” they need to realize that without the presence of organized labor acting as their de facto accomplice, they would be one step away from “respectable poverty.”  Big Union Vote at South Carolina’s Boeing Plant

How enlightened he is. How condescending. This is the view of a union bureaucrat---blame the members, blame the worker. He basically puts them in the “free rider” status which is what workers at unionized workplaces who opt to not pay dues are called. But why would these workers vote to join a union in such a hostile climate?

And according to the New York Times article quoted above, production and maintenance workers in South Carolina. “….make about $23 per hour on average, versus about $31 per hour for comparable workers in Washington State.”. The cost of housing, a huge percentage of a workers’ income, is probably significantly lower in SC and from what I can tell, the median wage for a cashier in SC is $8.16, a customer rep, $12.09, a Licensed Practical nurse, $18.35 so wages may not be the most important issue, it is also a question of union power on the job.

Macaray is wrong. It has little or nothing to do with “old fashioned American individualism” why the vote went in Boeing's favor. It is the bosses’ and their politicians’ aggression and the refusal of the labor hierarchy to combat it. We know by experience that management and the right wing politicians in SC waged a massive anti-union campaign. Boeing and the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance bought hundreds of spots for anti-union TV ads. They wage a media war of terror against workers in these situations.

I do not know all the details yet but it’s not uncommon to sign neutrality agreements with employers in unionizing drives as the UAW at Volkswagen did. It seems unlikely given the media blitz, but we know that the employer is never neutral. In the Volkswagen defeat, the union leadership even gave up the right to visit members in their own homes in exchange for access to them on the job.

The heads of organized labor are wedded to the Team Concept, the view that workers and bosses have the same interests and approach these disputes, which are really the class struggle over the share of wealth that workers create, as spats between teammates. The bosses’ use the term team members when they refer to their employees. But workers know differently.

In this case, in response to the ideological assault from Boeing in the media, claiming that the union would create a hostile labor/management environment at the workplace and likely lead to the loss of jobs if Boeing cut costs or left the state, IAMAW organizers replied in part saying that, “workers could seek the help of a union steward if they had a problem on the job but that they would otherwise be free to deal with managers on their own.”

That instills confidence does it?  “Nice unions finish last” Micah Uetricht's article about the UAW’s failure to organized Volkswagen in Tennessee is right on. He too was a former union organizer but at least he criticized the leadership’s strategy in that fiasco.

These fears are real for the rank and file worker. Macaray warns workers at Boeing that they will be one step away from “respectable poverty” if they refuse to accept organized labor as their “their de facto accomplice” Workers are not stupid, we do pay some attention to these issues. The UAW leadership, for example, like all of them,  has cooperated with the auto bosses in driving its members wages and conditions drastically lower. They sabotaged a strike in Cleveland North Carolina some years ago and cooperated with the company in terminating militant local leaders that dared to fight against concessions. These betrayals are the norm. And unionized workers are ending up in poverty all the time.

The IAMAW leadership played a disastrous role in the Boeing contract dispute in Washington State in 2013, forcing a concessionary contract on the workers. This occurs throughout organized labor, concessionary contracts forced down workers’ throats.

These Boeing workers would be well aware that unions don’t prevent layoffs; the strategy of the leadership is generally to file lawsuits and generally lose them, or bring workers out on strike for weeks, walking ineffective picket lines in order to end up with fewer concessions than the boss demanded----if they’re lucky. And these picket lines are not really strike picket lines. They are 24-hour protests that cost the dues payer a lot of time and money for no gain. In the hotel and restaurant strikes in San Francisco some years ago, the officials placed tape on the sidewalk and had the strikers stay within the tape. The tape stopped at the entrance to the struck business in order to allow those crossing, free, undisturbed access. This was agreed to in a deal with the union leadership the police and the hotel bosses. It was bizarre.

South Carolina may be in the South with all its history but it is obvious to anyone with a brain that unions are not preventing the continued downward spiral that is undermining our living standards and working conditions that were the result of decades of struggle and sacrifice and that the Union officialdom is supporting this.

These workers do not see the potential power of organized labor, the mobilizing of the membership and our communities brought to the table. They have no confidence that the union can protect them against the bosses’ aggression and they are right. Yes, the bosses might make certain concessions to keep unions out. But why pay union dues when ones working conditions and living standards continue to decline? Workers built unions to advance our material interests, it is not an exercise in civics. If conditions continue to deteriorate and wages decline as union dues increase; why pay them.

The IAMAW at its international conference last year passed a resolution or amendment that is intended to give the rank and file more power. This comes after the leaderships’ sabotage during the contract dispute a few years earlier. But this doesn’t really guarantee much.

The entire leadership of organized labor supports the Team Concept and we cannot win under those conditions. We witnessed the disgusting spectacle of the building trades leaders meeting with Trump and praising him. Hoffa, the lawyer that heads the Teamsters lavished Trump with praise and the public sector leaders have said next to nothing but whine about how unfair it is; they are a disgrace. How does this make women members or people of color feel seeing these people suck up to the predator in chief like that? Any thinking worker is sickened by it.

No one union, local or national union can win alone. We cannot win with the present leadership that has the same world-view as the employers. It is crucial that rank and file workers build fighting opposition caucuses based in the workplaces and the locals. Any group or those claiming to reform the unions must start form a position of openly campaigning against the Team Concept and openly challenging the present leadership’s concessionary approach. We must break the unwritten code that leaders don't criticize each other.

Building strong links with the community, demanding what we need as workers and members of the community as opposed to what is acceptable to the labor officialdom and their friends in the Democratic Party is the starting point.  To ignore the role of the leadership as Macaray does is common among the left as well. Members and former members of socialist organizations often have positions in the left bureaucracy, some as officials. Too often, socialists make concessions to the left wing of the labor bureaucracy at the expense of the members and building a wider opposition in the unions, our communities and society as a whole.

Those wanting to change the unions cannot avoid a conflict with the present clique that controls them; they won’t allow it.The members know it too, that this is serious business and they will not be drawn en masse to an opposition movement than avoids this inevitable struggle.

If we want the members to step forward, to accept the risks that joining a union and being active in it poses on the job, then we have to show them that when the bosses attack them, there are repercussions. As things stand with the present leadership of the trade unions, the bosses’ don’t fear them, they are their allies, their team members.

Boeing lays off more workers. Concessions lead to more concessions.

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

So Boeing is about to layoff close to 5000 positions. Apparently, it is doing this as investors are getting nervous as rich customers are looking to buy less expensive jets which may curb profits the WSJ reports. Yet a little over a year ago, Boeing workers rejected a concessionary contract only to have it forced down their throats through some unscrupulous methods from the labor hierarchy atop the IAM. I wrote about that here, and I spoke about it in the video below that I published at the time.  We should remind ourselves that Boeing also received some $9 billion in subsidies from the state of Washington to entice them to stay in that state rather than export the jobs to the non unionized South. So much for the vibrancy of the private sector that taps taxpayer money whenever investor's profits are threatened.

The labor hierarchy, in conjunction with the bosses and their mass media,  launched an all out assault against the Boeing workers who dared oppose concessions and the phony contract was eventually voted in.  Some Boeing workers, appealed the IAM International's actions to the NLRB.

So where do concessions get us?  The employers do not fear the labor hierarchy who they rely upon to suppress any movement from within the ranks of organized labor that might threaten the relationship they have built with the employers based on labor peace.  During this period, Kshama Sawant, the newly elected socialist councilor to the Seattle City Council, suggested at one point that the Boeing workers should take over the factory and run it themselves. This was a good suggestion and Sawant's time, and the campaign Socialist Alternative has built around her would have been well spent linking the minimum wage campaign to the Boeing workers struggles and strengthening it that way. More fruitful I think than endorsing and campaigning for the Democrat Bernie Sanders to win the presidency in the upcoming elections. Perhaps this has happened but I have not heard much of it from SA with all the euphoria about Bernie and the historical shift as Socialist Alternative endorses a Democratic Party candidate for the first time.

This is the same old story repeated time after time. If we accept that labor power, that workers must compete in the marketplace for who can work cheaper and with the least hindrance to profits, then we will inevitably continue to decline. Concessions lead to only one thing, more concessions.  The labor tops are not concerned about this as the concessions they force on their members in order to help the bosses out do not apply to them. They do not have to labor under the disastrous contracts they tell their members are necessary if we are to keep our jobs. As we can see, we lose our jobs anyway, if not to attrition, layoffs or moves to the Southern US, then they get shipped abroad. 

It always pays to reject the idea that workers and bosses are on the same side (The Team Concept) and fight back. Even if we lose a particular battle we lose less, there is less demoralization than passivity and defeat brings, lessons are learned and we move forward. Here are my comments from the events surrounding the Boeing contract of late 2013 early 2014.

Boeing Ford, Stellantis, Dockworkers. Opportunity Knocks Once Again for Organized Labor

 

Source: Al Jazeera

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

September 20-21 2004

 

Workers, members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 75 in Seattle Washington, are in the second week of their strike against the Boeing Corporation.  The vote to strike was almost unanimous with 96% voting yes.

 

This week, Boeing management announced it is planning to furlough (nice euphemism for layoff) thousands of Boeing’s non-union workers . After a negotiation session Tuesday, union negotiators told the membership in a letter that, “We will not mince words – after a full day of mediation, we are frustrated. The company was not prepared and was unwilling to address the issues you’ve made clear are essential for ending this strike: Wages and Pension,”.

 

As a veteran of three separate contract negotiations for my union, 1982, 1985 when we struck, and 1997, I can assure my brothers and sisters at Boeing that Boeing management were prepared. They were prepared to give the union negotiators the run around, to test them and see their reaction.

In the last negotiations I was in we had five reps from my union. The management also had a union and were in talks and they got six seats at the table. The employer covered the costs of the union reps during negotiations. At the very first session when we realized the supervisors had six paid reps and we got five, we objected. The boss dug in so we made it clear we didn’t need to be there and could spend the time in the field educating and mobilizing our members; building our solidarity committee we formed to reach out to other unions and workplaces and the wider community. It would have been an indication of weakness from the get go had we acted differently, our time was better spent building the strike. We got up to leave. We got our sixth representative paid.

 

Brian Bryant, the head of the AIM national union visited picket lines in Washington and Oregon this week and we heard the usual nice sounding phrases from him, “The IAM and our 600,000 members have the backs of every single striking Boeing worker in this nation.” This sounds nice if it’s the first time you’ve heard it but means nothing to be honest. In and of itself, it’s just bluster.

 

In media interviews he attacked the management for blaming the workers for Boeing’s problems that didn’t stop the company from rewarding top bosses millions of dollars in compensation. “None of Boeing’s problems have anything to do with these workers………all of the things that are wrong with Boeing right now are all attributed to bad decisions from corporate. …” he told Flying Magazine.

 

Bryant warned the bosses that, “…it will take a fair contract to resolve this strike and that members are resolved to wait as long as necessary to get that.”

 

“Wait as long as necessary”?

 

Such confidence can only come from an individual with a decent paycheck (Bryant’s income is somewhere around $300,000 a year) and who is likely not losing any pay during the strike. Strike pay from what I understand is $250 a week and while morale is always good in the beginning of disputes like these as workers get a real feel of the potential power we do have, the bosses know if they can keep them out long enough they will wear them down. Bryant knows it too. The first shot across the bow in our strike was a letter from the company (I was in the public sector) reminding us that our health benefits would be ending at the end of the month. With no national health care system in the US, what health care workers have is often through the employer.

 

With the average debt in America at $104,215 across mortgages, auto loans, student loans, and credit cards, we can’t walk picket lines forever.  Washington, Oregon and California residents are among the nations most indebted, with the average Washington resident in debt to the tune of $180,000 according to Experien, and this debt weighs heavily on working class people and our families. Every decision we make has to take this in to account and let’s not forget that the biggest contributor to bankruptcy in the US is health costs. American workers are in debt bondage.

 

So the bosses’ attitude at the early stages of negotiations is not driven by an unwillingness to take part or not being prepared. It is a strategy that every union activist should be all too familiar with and the IAM officials need to make that clear to the members and respond accordingly.  But we can almost guarantee that they won’t.

 

The fact that the IAM president can repeat the ridiculous statement that his members can wait as long as it takes to get what they need from the boss, shows how disconnected he is from the reality his members live with. Waiting doesn’t win strikes. Waiting is not a tactic for improving our material conditions.

 

Fighting defensive battles do not by their very nature improve conditions in the long run. Nor does isolating labor disputes to struggles between one union and one employer. Unfortunately, the national IAM (and entire AFL-CIO) leadership is committed to the Team Concept philosophy when it comes to labor relations. This is the view that workers and bosses, capital and labor, have the same economic interests; are partners. It is this view and the strategy and tactics that flow from it, that is at the root of the decades of defeats and betrayals.

 

Potential to build union power
At the same time the Boeing workers are striking this major industrial US corporation, 45,000 dockworkers along the U.S. East and GulfCoasts are threatening to strike on October first to halt the loss of thousands of jobs due to automation. In addition, United Auto Workers at the Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn Michigan have been told by UAW president Shawn Fain that they can set a strike deadline for 11:59 p.m., Wednesday, Sept 25,” and the union is also threatening to strike Stellantis after not reaching an agreement for more than a year.

 

We have seen an uptick in strike activity over the last period and increased efforts among the unorganized to unionize including at Starbucks, Amazon, among tech workers and other non-union sectors. This lays the groundwork for a generalized national campaign by workers, organized and unorganized against the offensive of capital that is being carried out through both major parties. There is the potential once again for a united national workers movement and a more powerful labor presence.

 

One of the main reasons strikes have been defeated over the past period is not due to the weakness of the organized working class, or the working class in general, rather the refusal of the heads of organized labor to tap to the powerful mood that exists in society for change. Consequently, battles are fought in isolation and demands limited to what are acceptable to the union hierarchy and their allies in the Democratic Party.

 

There is strong support throughout the US for unions and for workers’ right to strike to defend our wages, benefits and working conditions despite Biden and the US Congress denying that right to railway workers last year in order to defend railroad bosses’ profits.

 

 A recent AFL-CIO national survey reported that:

“More than three fourths believe unions have a positive impact on these important issues: workplace safety (82%), fair compensation and hours (78%), job security (77%), access to affordable health care (76%), retirement security (76%), ability to support their families (76%).

 

 

However, as we can see with the developments at Boeing, among dockworkers and auto, three areas where workers have immense potential power, that we are anything but weak and that the opportunity for a powerful offensive of our own knocks once again. But rest assured the heads of organized labor will likely snatch defeat from the jaws of victory’ will be “realistic” and act responsibly. Their collective world view, that capitalism and the market is the answer to all things, that profits are sacrosanct and that when capitalism goes it to crisis they, or their members and workers in general must bail it out will win the day.

 

It is the task of organized labor’s rank and file to transform these organizations that took heroic sacrifice to build. Any opposition groups within organized labor can start with a condemnation and campaign against the Team Concept.

 

I confess to being a bit repetitive with regards to these views on the class struggle and labor disputes, and that workers that read this blog might tire of it. But because organized labor’s hierarchy refuses to abandon what is a decades old strategy of class collaboration doesn’t make what I suggest here wrong. We cannot win with the present approach. We have to recognize that we have to challenge and violate anti-union laws. Unions were not built by obeying laws.

 

I should add that having a federal mediator in negotiations is not having a neutral party present as we are led to believe. A federal mediator is a representative of the state just like a judge. The mediator is after peace at the workers’ expense.

 

Lastly, here is a video I made 10 years ago when the national IAM leadership, with help from the Democratic Party politicians, and the media orchestrated a yes vote to a contract the Boeing workers rejected only a month earlier. Readers might be interested in a little bit of the history between these two parties.

 

Kshama Sawant calls for workers to take over Boeing

Kshama Sawant is changing the dialogue in US society.  We demand the right to socially productive labor.  We reject the notion that we have to compete with each other for who gets a decent life and who doesn't.  This is reprinted from Kiro TV

Seattle City Councilmember-elect shares radical idea with Boeing workers

By Gary Horcher

SEATTLE —

Seattle City Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant told Boeing machinists her idea of a radical option, should their jobs be moved out of state

“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” Sawant announced to a cheering crowd of union supporters in Seattle’s Westlake Park Monday night.
This week, Sawant became Seattle’s first elected Socialist council member. She ran on a platform of anti-capitalism, workers’ rights, and a $15 per-hour minimum wage for Seattle workers.
On Monday night, she spoke to supporters of Boeing Machinists, six days after they rejected a contract guaranteeing jobs in Everett building the new 777X airliner for eight years, in exchange for new workers giving up their guaranteed company pensions.

Now Boeing is threatening to take those jobs to other states. “That will be nothing short of economic terrorism because it's going to devastate the state's economy,” she said.
Sawant is calling for machinists to literally take-possession of the Everett airplane-building factory, if Boeing moves out. She calls that "democratic ownership."

“The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don't need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do,” she said.
Sawant says after workers “take-over” the Everett Boeing plant; they could build things everyone can use.

“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.

Sawant says she was referring to “drones” when speaking of war machines. Still, she says even as they work on the lines, building airplanes daily, she believes Boeing workers are under siege.

“Workers have to realize, they have more power than they think,” she said.

Boeing workers' reject contract. What's next?

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Machinists at Boeing rejected the latest contract offer from the company by a 67% to 33% margin.  The contract contained deep concessions including eliminating the defined benefit retirement plan (which this writer has as a public employee retiree) and replacing it with a 401K type deal.  I reported on this yesterday and the rejecting of the contract is an important step, but what to do next is crucial.

We can see how the 1% and their flunkies react when workers, particularly those of us in such an important industry as aerospace, don’t walk in to the slaughterhouse like sheep to the slaughter.  “Chaos marked the announcement,” the Wall Street Journal reported today.  Union officials acting in their usual cowardly fashion, refused to publicly endorse the contract but spoke at length on the need for it to pass, there’s no denying that.

From the bosses’ point of view, chaos arises when their allies atop the trade union movement can’t keep their members under control. The idea that bosses and workers have the same economic interests and are on the same team, the view perpetrated by the union hierarchy doesn’t really resonate with those that do the work, especially as the attacks on our living standards continue to erode all we have won over the years.

The mood against the contract and the leadership’s passivity was disliked enough that the IAM’s International Aerospace Coordinator, Mark Johnson left the meeting amid boos and jeering after reading the result and as I reported yesterday, the pressure from below was being felt on local leaders to such an extent that International representatives shut them down and took over media communications.

What happens next is not clear. What is clear if history is to be considered is that the IAM leadership at the highest levels will be working on wearing the ranks down and pushing some sort of concessionary deal on them. They will be in secret negotiations with the Boeing bosses that’s for sure.  Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes CEO stated, "We are very disappointed in the outcome of the union vote. But without the terms of this contract extension, we're left with no choice but to open the process competitively and pursue all options for the 777X."

It is actually quite rare for corporations which are recognized as “persons” in the US to allow a human to speak for them.  Normally it’s “Boeing” said, “BP” says etc. The economic terrorism stage and the blackmail and extortion that accompany it will now come in to play and it is this stage of the struggle that workers have to respond to after the rejection.

There is no such thing as “Boeing” in a sense.  It is a particular process where thousands of workers come together to make a product.  The decisions about how this process takes place and where is in the hands of real living beings although many of them we will never know. These are the real power in society and their decisions are based on the profit on their investments.  So an important aspect mass transportation in society, in this case, the manufacture of airlines, is in the hands of a few thousand unnamed and unelected gamblers.

Their next move is to throw the decision about this particular issue out in to the market place.  They want us to have a choice within the framework of their choosing. They intend to make workers and our communities compete for this social investment and the jobs it creates.  One of their decisions in 2011 was to build a non-union plant in a right to work state, South Carolina.   They have rights; they have to right to determine when, where, and how society’s wealth is allocated.  This is a right we have to take away from them and ensure that the wealth of society is allocated in a constructive and collective way based on the needs of society and in harmony with nature.

I don’t know the voter turn out but there are some 32,000 members in the Seattle local and from what I can gather, turnout was high but that remains to be confirmed.  That 67% voted no is significant and we can assume that even among the 33% that voted yes, many of them did so seeing no alternative on the table.

A no vote is a first step in some ways but now the many members who chose to exercise their vote in this way must come to see themselves as activists, not passive bystanders who simply vote nay or aye on details being presented to us by the present leadership of our organizations.  We have to lead. The coupon clippers that control Boeing want workers and our communities to outbid each other for who can offer the 1% the most lucrative climate for profit taking.  We must reject this idea.

There are thousands of Boeing workers who want to fight. This is good. The anger expressed through a no vote must be turned in to action in the form of building a rank and file opposition and leadership that has the potential to transform the present situation within organized labor and beyond.

We reject the idea that we compete with each other for the right to work and earn a decent living.  In Seattle there is bit of an historic development taking place in the council race for mayor, the Boeing workers should link up with this movement.  Nationally, the movement for a $15 an hour minimum wage is gaining some momentum, and while it is still inadequate in many states, for millions of workers it doubles their hourly pay. Fast food workers are beginning to stir.  It is clear that there is a significant change in the mood as workers are looking to fight back after years and years of concessions and declining wages and conditions.

Here in the Bay Area we had months of off again on again strikes and contract disputes particularly in mass transit.  The reason this was so prolonged in my opinion is that the local leaderships of the transit unions were feeling the pressure from below to produce some gains.  They would have capitulated without hesitation but like the local leadership in Seattle the ranks were breathing down their necks and they had to appear to be fighting. They wore them down in the end but it was a reflection in my mind of increased anger rising to the surface throughout the nation.

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In a written statement after the vote the IAM's local’s president, Tom Wrobleski refused to comment according to the WSJ but issued a written statement that read: "It is my belief that we represent the best aerospace workforce in the world and hope that as a result of this vote Boeing won't discard our skills when looking to place the 777X."

This is a view propagated by many in the union movement that one particular group is the best at what they do. It’s often a way of justifying the wages and benefits they have as opposed to the less fortunate, non-union or lower waged.  But we need to stay away from this view as we have won what we have through struggle not because we were the best at anything.  That is also another way of pitting us against one another. I am sure Machinists at other airlines and manufacturers would question that, it’s not inclusive but exclusive. We need unity and solidarity. The boss doesn’t care too much how good we are, labor is plentiful. The Boeing workers rather than being driven to compete with other aerospace workers in right to work S Carolina should reach out to them, build links with them and help coordinate national actions against a global giant.

"The game is afoot and we intend to compete," says Washington State Governor, Jay Inslee, a Democrat, after the result.  But this should not be a “game”.  We are not Monopoly figures. The taxpayers of Washington State already gave Boeing an $8.7 billion bribe.  So what’s next? Another state offers more money and another even more until we are all down to the lowest denominator and the capitalist class rakes in the dough. If we won’t accede to their demands they’ll move abroad if they can, they don’t care. We must and our movement must be, an international movement, must offer the 1% no place to hide. One worker was quoted as saying that

It is up to those workers not looking for a career in the Union bureaucracy to step to the plate and transform our movement; the present leadership and their Democratic Party allies will not do this.

Reject austerity
Demand what we want and need to live a productive and healthy life

Rely on our own strength not the courts or the Democratic Party

Reach out to our communities, youth immigrants and all those fighting the forces of the market.

Reject competition, work and a job is a human right