Unions are making headlines all across the country with drastic measures. One company that is back in the spotlight is Boeing. For the entire year, the aerospace giant has been in troubled waters, and it does not look like it will end anytime soon. On Friday, just after contract negotiations stalled, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg announced that the company would be laying off around 10% of the company or 17,000 people. Boeing has lost $9.97 per share and about $1.3 billion in cash just in the last quarter alone.
This is not just an isolated event. Many companies are receiving pushback from their employees with Union leaders even being shot down by their own. Union workers from companies including Boeing, AT&T, and Textron have voted no on the contracts that their leaders took months to negotiate for. The machinists at Boeing voted 94% for the proposed contract that offered a 25% wage increase over four years.
This marks the first time the Union has ever voted no on a contract. Josh McKinzie, a Boeing factory worker, told the Wall Street Journal; “‘At face value, it didn’t look bad. But the more I read it, the more it seemed like we’d be in pretty much the same boat’”. At Tectron, 5,000 Union machinists from the IAW have been on strike since September 23 where negotiations stalled and have yet to resume. Even at AT&T 8,000 employees have been working without a contract since April and rejected the most recent iteration of one.
One Union strike that seems to be progressing positively is that of the dockworkers. On October 3rd Union workers agreed to pause the strike until January 17th for negotiations to take place. The ports helped ease the dock workers' minds by offering a 62% wage increase instead of 50%. This is a huge relief not just for the Union workers but also for the everyday American. If the strike had gone on for a few weeks the country would have suffered major shortages from bananas to cars. Unions are the most powerful tools that the American worker has access to and we are seeing that power on full display.
Sources:
https://apnews.com/article/boeing-layoffs-strike-airplane-factories-de637999cf525699577b42b72bff2a70
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