Boeing workers at three Midwestern plants where military aircraft and weapons are developed voted Sunday to reject the company\u2019s latest contract offer and to continue a strike that started almost three months ago. <\/p>\n
The strike by about 3,200 machinists at the plants in Mascoutah, Ill., St. Louis and St. Charles, Mo., is smaller in scale than a walkout last year by 33,000 Boeing workers who assemble commercial jetliners. But it threatens to complicate the aerospace company\u2019s progress in regaining its financial footing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoeing claimed they listened to their employees \u2014 the result of today\u2019s vote proves they have not,\u201d Brian Bryant, president of the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Boeing said it was disappointed by the result and noted the vote had been close. The company said in a statement that it was increasingly hearing from workers \u201cwho want to cross the picket line\u201d and \u201cunderstand the value of our offer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe union\u2019s statement is misleading since the vote failed by the slimmest of margins, 51% to 49%,\u201d the statement read. \u201cWe are turning our focus to executing the next phase of our contingency plan in support of our customers.\u201d <\/p>\n
The machinists\u2019 union acknowledged the vote was close but said in a message to members that \u201cvery few\u201d workers have crossed the picket line.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur solidarity remains strong, and the company\u2019s claim otherwise is wrong,\u201d the union said. <\/p>\n
Union leaders say talks have stalled over issues such as wages and retirement benefits, while Boeing has argued that workers\u2019 demands exceed the cost of living in the Midwest.<\/p>\n
Ahead of Sunday\u2019s vote, the union told its members that it did not recommend approval of the company\u2019s latest offer, which it said \u201chad no meaningful improvements\u201d to retirement benefits and wage increases for workers with more seniority.<\/p>\n
Negotiations escalated over the summer in the days leading up to the strike in August, with the workers rejecting an earlier proposed agreement that included a 20% wage hike over the life of the five-year contract.<\/p>\n
Boeing countered with a modified agreement that didn\u2019t boost the proposed pay raises but did remove a scheduling provision affecting the workers\u2019 ability to earn overtime pay. Workers rejected that offer, too, and went on strike the next morning. They also voted against revised terms in September. <\/p>\n
The company has said that it was prepared for a strike, with a contingency plan in place \u201cto ensure our non-striking workforce can continue supporting our customers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boeing\u2019s Defense, Space & Security business accounts for more than one-third of the company\u2019s revenue. Boeing is set to report its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Yamat writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boeing workers at three Midwestern plants where military aircraft and weapons are developed voted Sunday to reject the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[14712,9709,19243,1804,19247,48,52,51,19242,47,50,49,19244,19246,19245,3025,86,2328,4486,5663,4455],"class_list":{"0":"post-25005","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-agreement","9":"tag-boeing","10":"tag-boeing-worker","11":"tag-company","12":"tag-contingency-plan","13":"tag-la","14":"tag-la-headlines","15":"tag-la-news","16":"tag-late-contract-offer","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","19":"tag-los-angeles-news","20":"tag-midwest","21":"tag-midwestern-plant","22":"tag-retirement-benefit","23":"tag-statement","24":"tag-strike","25":"tag-union","26":"tag-vote","27":"tag-wage","28":"tag-worker"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}