The company wants to eliminate retiree medical benefits for workers recalled or hired beginning in July 2006, and to sharply increase workers’ payments for medical insurance. Jim Robertson, a flight line worker at the Everett, Washington, plant explained, “I pay $66 a month for family coverage right now. They wanted to raise it to $180, with a $900 deductible.”

Strikers pointed out that Boeing’s profits have tripled in the last three years.

“If we accept substandard conditions like this when times are good, then God help us when there’s a downturn, and you know there’s going to be a downturn,” said Dale Conklin, a machinist with 17 years at Boeing. Conklin was among hundreds of workers on the first picket shift at midnight as workers left the Renton, Washington, facility to join the strike.

The company is also seeking to reduce jobs by forcing machine operators who used to run a single machine to operate four machines simultaneously. It proposes cutting wages for the 960 workers at the Wichita facility.

John Lentz, an electrician at the Renton plant who had been laid off for three years and just returned to work a month before the strike, said, “I guess they thought we’d be happy to take the cash bonus and accept the contract. But I can survive without a paycheck from Boeing—I did it for three years. We have to stick together.” Lentz said he thought the company is hoping to divide younger and older workers.

Dockworkers from International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 19 joined the Machinists’ picket line at the Seattle Boeing plant on September 3. One of them was ILWU member Pat O’Connor, who has also been on the picket lines of the Northwest Airlines workers—organized by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association—most days since that strike began two weeks earlier. He said solidarity with both striking unions is needed to beat back the assaults by Boeing and Northwest.

Bob Bullard, a 20-year Boeing machine repairman, agreed. “I stopped by the Northwest picket line to show support for their strike too,” he said. “All unions should support this—it’s everybody’s fight.”

Athelia Hawkins was part of a lively picket line at the Auburn, Washington, plant to support her husband, a striking IAM member. She said she was outraged by the lack of action to evacuate people from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. “I’m disgusted with the way they treat us. It just reaffirms for me that our government is not in support of working-class people.

“I want to see more people banding together like the workers are doing here and stop just accepting the injustice of the government.”
 
 
Related articles:
Labor Day actions boost solidarity for airline strikers
UK airport workers fight to defend union  
 
 
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