Boeing bosses are staring down the barrel.
The twists and turns of the past week paint a picture of managers badly wrong-footed by the depth of fury among workers who tossed out a 25% pay rise deal and launched strike action.
“They probably didn’t think that we had enough people for the strike,” Kushal Varma, a Boeing mechanic, told Reuters. “But this is a movement of people who are willing to put their livelihoods on the line to get what’s fair.”
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.