Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED
10-27-24
On September 13th, 33,000 workers, members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) rejected Boeing’s contract offer and voted to strike the company by a 95% majority.
On October 25th, workers rejected the latest offer by a margin of 64%. This is the second contract that the workers have voted down and Boeing bosses, not to mention the Biden Administration, and I am sure the IAM local and international leadership as well, are deeply concerned.
Every strike is an important event for all workers, union or not. But I cannot stress the importance of this strike for working people and I’ll tell you why. Despite the big business media, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, focusing on money, which doesn’t mean money or wages, are not important as we can’t feed our families without it, the sticking point in this class battle is the pension.
I am a retired public sector worker, and I have a defined benefit pension. It has enabled me to live a relatively secure and decent life. I do not intend to go in to detail about this subject so I will just add this short description:
“A defined benefit pension is a retirement plan that provides a fixed benefit to an employee at retirement. The benefit is based on the employee's earnings history, age, and years of service, rather than on the performance of the employee's investments”
For the hedge fund manager, the investor, the CEO’s of Blackrock and Goldman Sachs and other coupon clippers that do no productive labor, the market is god and today’s trade union hierarchy agree with them. But it isn’t. The market is a failure.
Over past decades, the employers have eliminated defined benefit plans pushing workers in to market based plans. It’s not because the employers think workers are savvy investors, it’s a cost cutting measure and relieves the employer of any obligation to provide a secure retirement after 38 years of loyalty to them. These days at U.S. companies, worker-driven savings accounts like 401(k)s have mostly replaced pension plans that provide fixed monthly payments to retirees.
The Unionized workforce is pretty much the last bastion of the defined benefit pension. From 1980 through 2008, the proportion of private wage and salary workers participating in defined benefit pension plans fell from 38 percent to 20 percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1975 32% of pension plans were defined benefit plans.
Boeing ended the defined pension plan about ten years ago and getting it back is the major reason the contract was rejected again along with wages. After years of austerity. “I have put more time in this place than I was ever required to. I have literally blood, sweat and tears from working at this company…..” one 37 year old worker with 16 years at the company said after the vote, “I’m looking at working until I’m 70 because I have this possibility that I might not get to retire based on what’s happening in the market.”
“The pension should have been the top priority. We all said that was our top priority, along with wage,…..”said another worker with 38 years at the company, ……“Now is the prime opportunity in a prime time to get our pension back, and we all need to stay out and dig our heels in.”
Boeing has offered bribes as bosses often do to get contracts passed, a $7000 signing bonus in this rejected deal, but it’s not worked yet. Along with this, the new CEO Kelly Ortberg is promising to change the culture at Boeing telling workers that he wants to “reset” the relationship between the bosses and the workers, “so we don’t become so disconnected in the future.” It sounds real family like as he wants management to spend more time on the shop floor in order to know what’s going on so that they can, “…prevent the festering of issues and work better together to identify, fix, and understand the root cause.” He’s lying of course and workers know it.
After our strike in 1985, our employer hired a consultant, paying him some, $50,000 to interview our negotiators and Executive Board to find out why we struck. After months of negotiations and a one-month strike they didn’t know apparently. I was the only negotiating team member that refused to speak to him. They wanted to get a clearer idea of divisions in the union leadership and who provided the best opportunity as a conduit to what was going on.
In response to the no vote, John Holden, president of District 751 of the IAM that represents the majority of the workers, told the media that he intends to, “….ask the White House to continue to try to help the parties find a resolution”. The White House was involved in the deal that was just rejected through Biden’s acting labor secretary Julie Su. This is another costly error.
Having a representative of the state and a Democratic Party official in negotiations does not strengthen the labor side; it’s just another management representative. It does not encourage workers to rely on our own strength, not just in our own workplace, but in conjunction with our communities, the rest of the labor movement and workers as a whole throughout the nation and internationally.
No serious worker thinks these people are independent observers in there to help the workers get a better deal. This appeal to class collaboration on the part of the IAM leadership is why they lost the pension in the first place and why organized labor has been driven backwards in general. Negotiations should be public and rank and file members should have elected representatives present.
Boeing is a major US corporation that employs 150,000 people and is a one of the nation’s largest exporters. The company makes commercial planes, military jets, rockets and spacecraft. (NY Times 10-25-24). The worker quoted above who said, ……“Now is the prime opportunity in a prime time to get our pension back.” Is right. But if we’ve learned anything over the past three or four decades it is that unionized workers have suffered under both Republican and Democratic Administrations and that no set of workers, no individual strike, can defeat the bosses’ efforts to place the crisis of capitalism on to the backs of the working class alone. Donating funds and sending messages of support are not enough.
The strategy and tactics of the present union hierarchy have failed. Appealing to the Democratic Party has failed. Leaving workers on picket lines for weeks and months that don’t shut down production are a disaster and strengthen the incorrect argument that we are weak and the bosses strong. Isolating strikes is a failure.
I was reading yesterday that the AFL-CIO is hiring 1600 canvassers ($20-25 an hour) to go door to door to persuade workers why voting for the Democratic candidate in the coming election for President is the right thing to do. Good luck with that! A major reason millions of workers don’t vote is their disgust at both parties and the trade union leadership pushing a party on them that they abandoned long has contributed to the rise of Trump.
The AFL-CIO will spend hundreds of millions of dollars, billions over the years to get an antilabor antiworker regime in to office. Thousands of union staffers and volunteers will walk precincts and man phone banks.
The IAM should make an issue of the defined benefit pension plan and the cost of living and flood Seattle and the area with striking workers and their allies armed with a program that pledges union help and support for organizing the unorganized, increasing wages, demanding a national health system and speaking to workers needs in general. Workers at Starbucks, Amazon and other super exploited workplaces, Tesla for example are crying out for help. The Democrats won’t help them, ask a railroad worker.
The IAM could initiate a call for a national conference on reversing the tide, starting with their effort to bring back a defined pension for everyone union or not and one that people can live on. People retire in the US and then get another job. The ILA should join it and other major unions like the UAW and the ILWU. And public sector unions have tremendous potential power. We are not weak brothers and sisters, our leaders are. Their policy from the get go is concessions.
Instead of being a major campaigner for Kamala Harris, UAW president Shawn Fain should be appealing to the rank and file of the unions on strike and the union movement in general to struggle for such an approach to the capitalist offensive. Where leaders refuse to participate then appeals should be made over their heads to the rank and file of the movement. Yes, it’s a no-no by their rules but it’s necessary.
When I was a delegate to the California State Labor Federation’s bi-annual conferences, Executive Secretary Jack Henning once proclaimed that we need global unionism to combat global capitalism. That’s a good start though he never did anything about it.
It is apparent that the US is awash with cash as we have sent billions of dollars of weaponry to various regimes, including one that the ICJ says is a genocide. We cannot limit our issues to those that affect one workplace or one union and we certainly cannot avoid foreign policy as the present trade union hierarchy does. We either stand together or we all die.
Just a few thoughts comrades.
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