The following statement was issued by the Boeing Workers Rank-and-File Committee. To get more information or to join the committee, text (406) 414-7648, email boeingworkersrfc@gmail.com or fill out the form at the end of this article.
We, the Boeing Workers Rank-and-File Committee, call for the broadest possible NO vote on Wednesday. The agreement meets none of our demands, which we have made abundantly clear from the start, including an immediate 40 percent pay increase and the restoration of our pensions. No amount of bureaucratic spin can hide the fact that it is a pro-company sellout.
The worst lies outside the four corners of this agreement. After contracts were passed last year at UPS and in the auto industry, management unleashed massive job cuts prepared well in advance. But Boeing has already started this even before we have signed anything.
The 17,000 global job cuts are a declaration of war. They want to replace a highly trained, expert workforce with low-paid casual workers at the beck and call of management. This is why they have added such terms as a probationary period for new employees.
If we accept this deal, it will pave the way for more disasters on Boeing airlines. We are highly trained professionals who spend years becoming familiar with our jobs, and there are already not enough engineers on the floor to take up safety issues as they arise. QA issues abound due to cost-cutting decisions made on the basis of the company’s bottom line by managers with backgrounds in finance or HR, not engineering.
On Wednesday, we urge all of you to send this contract to the trash where it belongs. But after five weeks on strike, it has become clear that we need a new strategy if we are going to win. As long as the union bureaucrats control this strike, we are fighting with both hands tied behind our back. They have a strategy for defeat, not for victory.
The IAM never even wanted this strike in the first place. From the start, District 751 President Jon Holden said the IAM’s main goal was to “save Boeing from itself.” What he really meant was the bureaucrats wanted to work with management to help make us pay for a crisis created by Boeing’s executives and wealthy shareholders.
This is why they have strung us out on $250 a week in strike pay and are hardly even bothering to keep up the pickets anymore. Meanwhile, they are trying to isolate us by imposing a contract at Textron. That contract is even worse than the one they rejected before striking, and workers there suspect foul play in the counting of ballots.
The IAM bureaucrats got their marching orders direct from the government to shut down our strike. This was why acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, whom the bureaucrats thanked for brokering this deal, was shipped off to Seattle last week. This is the same reason she and other White House officials intervened this month to shut down the East Coast docks strike.
We must fight for the principle that the rank and file holds absolute authority, not union officials rubbing elbows with management and government officials. To establish this, we propose the following four-point strategy:
1. Rank-and-file oversight over Wednesday’s vote itself. Many recall how in 2014 the IAM claimed we supposedly narrowly approved a 10-year extension and the surrender of our pensions;
2. An end to all closed-door talks, with rank-and-file control and oversight over all future bargaining sessions;
3. The tripling of strike pay to $750 a week. The $300 million in IAM assets is our money, not a slush fund for the six-figure salaries of union bureaucrats, and;
4. The mobilization of the working class behind our strike. We must fan out to the docks, the schools, the factories and other workplaces, setting up informational pickets and using other methods to urge them to support our fight.
The intervention of the government is a sign of weakness, not strength. The two big-business parties are terrified our resistance will inspire others. In particular, they are worried that we are threatening the operations of a major defense contractor on the eve of a new and unpopular war with Iran.
This is also why the whole ruling class is closing ranks behind Boeing. Ryanair’s CEO summed up their outlook when he urged Boeing to hold out against us, even after two accidents on his airline’s 737s. The lives of airline passengers are nothing next to beating back the demands of the working class for a decent standard of living.
Wall Street executives may control huge piles of money, but workers create all of that wealth, and we outnumber them a million to one. We have to appeal to workers all over the world, not just for moral solidarity but for a fighting unity, answering the corporate conspiracy against our strike with the massive power of the working class.
They—the IAM, Boeing and the government—want us to believe we are powerless to get anything better. But we have massive potential support. Embraer workers in Brazil have just rejected a sellout deal of their own. Airbus workers in Europe are fighting against mass layoffs. In other industries, workers are also fighting against sellout contracts, including on the railroads, where they bitterly remember how Congress imposed a strike ban in 2022.
If anything has been proven over the past month, it is that the chief obstacle to our unity is the dictatorship of the bureaucracy in the unions. We have to connect a broad appeal with a rank-and-file rebellion to transfer power from the apparatus to workers ourselves.
Our strike has also revealed the fact that society is divided into two huge camps: the workers who create the wealth and the capitalists who live by exploiting us. Our strike is a fight over who controls society’s wealth, us or them.
If you agree with this, then join us today. Contact us by texting (406) 414-7648, emailing boeingworkersrfc@gmail.com or filling out the form at the end of this article.