United States: turbulence ahead as class struggle heats up at Boeing

One minute after midnight on September 13, thirty-three thousand members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Districts 751 and W24 walked off the job and set up picket lines. It’s the first strike since 2008 at Boeing, the aerospace behemoth employing 66,000 workers throughout Washington state and over 171,000 nationwide.

[Originally published at communistusa.org]

A headline in the capitalist press summed up the situation this way: “Bosses bruised, blindsided, and on brink of crisis.” The bosses may have been “blindsided,” but to anyone following recent developments in the class struggle at Boeing, the steadfastness and determination of the workers comes as no surprise.

In an interview with The Communist last month, one worker described the militant mood on a Boeing factory floor in the weeks leading up to the strike:

For the last two weeks, multiple times a day, the workers [have had] a full on demonstration on the inside of the plant. Horns, whistles, disturbances across the board. The facility is loud enough, and with this it’s getting more and more intense.

Another Boeing worker told The Communist, “We know what’s been lost in the past, and the importance of fighting . . . Nothing was given to us. We had to fight for it, and now we gotta fight for it again.”

This is the first strike since 2008 at Boeing, the aerospace behemoth employing 66,000 workers throughout Washington state and over 171,000 nationwide / Image: IAM District 751, Facebook

Murderous management

The strike comes as a series of international scandals have sullied the company’s media profile. In January 2024, an explosive decompression blew out a door on a Boeing 737 Max 9 just ten minutes into flight. This followed on the heels of fatal accidents in 2018 and 2019, which killed 346 people due to mechanical and software issues.

The Boeing bosses bear direct blame for these disasters. Workers interviewed by the NTSB explained that they were pushed to meet impossible deadlines and forced to work without required training. One subcontractor said, “Well, basically we’re the cockroaches of the factory.”

Capitalists care only about one thing: profit. As long as financial settlements resulting from passenger deaths and safety lawsuits don’t outweigh the increased revenue generated by cutting corners, these social parasites see nothing wrong. In fact, they want to speed up production even further!

Despite Boeing management’s murderous failures, shareholders approved a historic $33 million pay package for CEO Dave Calhoun, up 45% from his 2022 pay. Meanwhile, starting wages for mechanics sit around $23 per hour. When Calhoun finally resigned in disgrace—having overseen crashing planes and exploding doors—he got a farewell gift: $45 million more in company stock. His successor, Kelly Ortberg, who took the helm six weeks ago, will reportedly make $16 million this year, rising to $20.5 million in 2025.

“Slap in the face”

In an interview with The Communist, one crane operator at the Everett plant called this a “slap in the face” to workers who’ve seen their pay increase by only a few percentage points in recent years. But they weren’t silent—they prepared for struggle. On July 17, tens of thousands of workers organized in IAM District 751 packed a stadium in downtown Seattle. There, they voted by 99.9% to authorize a strike, setting September 12 as the deadline to reach a new deal. They demanded a 40% raise over three years, the return of their pension plan, which was lost in 2014, and that production facilities remain in Washington.

Boeing has been gradually moving its operations to areas with lower labor costs, like South Carolina, where a nonunion assembly plant opened in 2011. The bosses defeated a 2017 attempt by the IAM to unionize the factory. Now they seek to reassure workers that they’re here to stay in the Puget Sound, in part by relocating their CEO to Seattle. These actions should be seen for what they are—at best, empty promises; at worst, a trick to pacify the workers. At the first opportunity, the bosses will move production to wherever they can squeeze the most money out of the working class.

Who controls the factory?

District 751 President Jon Holden argued that the CEO’s decision to move to Seattle was “a step in the right direction, that will fill . . . a leadership void.” But the question isn’t simply about the presence or absence of top corporate leadership; it depends on where the workers are being led. The bosses are only interested in taking Boeing in one direction—towards higher profits via lower wages, worse benefits, and degraded working conditions. What matters isn’t where the CEO sits, it’s who is in control—the workers or the bosses?

A crane operator at the Everett plant called the Calhoun and Ortberg’s pay a “slap in the face” / Image: Jetstar Airways, Wikimedia Commons

The IAM leaders demand a seat on Boeing’s Board of Directors. “We have to save this company from itself,” Holden said. But a single, isolated union rep on the capitalist board will have no decision making power, instead coming under constant pressure to “go along to get along.”

Workers are right to want a say in the running of the company, but the way to get that is by pressing for control by the ranks on the shop floor. Workers’ control maximizes the impact of the union’s numbers and makes the point that it’s the workers themselves who make the planes, not the corporate board.

Workers produce, assemble, and distribute all planes. And it’s workers who staff and fly them once they’re built. The capitalists don’t play any useful part in the process. Instead, as recent catastrophes show, they play a deadly and destructive role. The ultimate solution is for companies like Boeing to be nationalized under democratic workers’ control and management. Achieving this will require a workers’ government, and the first step in this direction is building a workers’ party.

Strike!

On September 8, four days before the strike deadline, Boeing bosses and IAM leaders announced a tentative agreement. It included a 25% wage increase over 4 years, which considering the rate of inflation, would have been tantamount to a cost of living adjustment. The proposal also failed to include the return of the pension system and even lacked the token seat on the board.

Holden said of the deal, “We can honestly say that this proposal is the best contract we’ve negotiated in our history.” Workers, on the other hand, expressed frustration at the agreement and waged a campaign to vote it down.

The communists of the RCA stand with IAM workers in their struggle and showed our solidarity on the picket line four times in the first week of the strike / Image: RCA

On September 12, the workers of IAM 751 voted by 94.6% to reject the advice of their union bargaining committee, reject the offer from the bosses, and go out on strike.

One worker the RCA spoke with on the picket line openly raised removing Holden from his position as president, citing bad leadership in past struggles. It’s clear that the union leadership would prefer a quick, limited settlement—and a return to the old conditions in the plants—while many IAM workers are eager to take the fight as far as necessary. In the words of Boeing mechanic Kushal Varma, “This is a movement of people who are willing to put their livelihoods on the line to get what’s fair.”

Organize the unorganized

Yesterday, the bosses announced plans to furlough non-IAM workers as a cost-saving measure, showing that the strike is already having an effect on Boeing’s bottom line. However, to really win this fight, the struggle needs to be expanded. To wage the most effective struggle against the Boeing bosses, IAM machinists need support from all the workers at all Boeing facilities. As a first step toward building this solidarity, the IAM should demand that any Boeing worker who joins their union should be covered under their contract wherever they work—including in South Carolina! This should be coupled with a militant initiative to organize the unorganized workers in all the other plants.

The communists of the RCA stand with IAM workers in their struggle and showed our solidarity on the picket line four times in the first week of the strike. We understand that capitalism has reached a dead end. Even in the United States, the richest country on earth, an entire generation has been doomed to a lower standard of living than their parents. It’s the working class alone that can overcome the limitations of this dying system and save our society from the ruling class.

Solidarity with the IAM workers! 

Organize the unorganized!

Victory to the Boeing workers!