Boeing workers accepted massive pay raises to end a nearly two-month-old strike late Monday, clearing the way for aircraft production to resume.
About 33,000 aircraft workers have been on strike since Sept. 13, demanding higher wages and other economic gains from the troubled aerospace company. Workers rejected two contract offers from Boeing before accepting this one.
“Working people know what it’s like when a company overreaches and takes away more than is fair,” Jon Holden, president of International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 751, and Brandon Bryant, president of IAM District W24, said in a joint statement. Throughout contract negotiations and the strike, Boeing’s unions had argued that if the airplane maker had funds to buy back stock for the benefit of its shareholders, it had the cash to offer pay raises. Bryant and Holden repeated that theme after winning concessions. “Through this strike and the resulting victory, frontline workers at Boeing have done their part to begin rebalancing the scales in favor of the middle class – and in doing so, we hope to inspire other workers in our industry and beyond to continue standing up for justice at work.
Boeing President and CEO Kelly Ortberg thanked workers for accepting the contract. Ortberg had barely been at Boeing for a month when machinists went on strike, and he’d made getting a new contract and getting employees back to work major planks of his turnaround plan.
“While the past few months have been difficult for all of us, we are all part of the same team,” Ortberg said. “We will only move forward by listening and working together. There is much work ahead to return to the excellence that made Boeing an iconic company.”
Going into contract talks this year, machinists had two major goals – 40% pay raises and the restoration of the company’s defined-benefit pension retirement program. On Monday, workers agreed to 38% raises (though that compounds to 43.7% throughout the life of the contract) but no pension plan.
The contract does call for Boeing to match, dollar-for-dollar, up to 8% contributions from employees into their 401(k) programs, a very high figure by U.S. corporate standards. The 2021 Investment Company Institute/BrightScope report on average 401(k) matches, released in August of this year, found that a 50-cents-on-the dollar match up to 6% of wages was the most common benefit in the U.S.
Other contract highlights include:
- A $12,000 ratification bonus (available either as cash or a split of cash and 401 (k) contributions
- Call-in language back to current contract
- New long-term disability plan and big improvement to short term disability plan
- Health care cost containment
- Improved overtime rules
- Key job security provisions
