Offers chip away at fought-for benefits

I guess we turned down a good economic package from Boeing, considering that is all you read or hear about in the media. The package sounds real good on the surface. If you consider that we have gone over four years without a general wage increase because of takeaways the last three contracts, we feel we can do better. The bonuses are only for the first year. Our next possible bonus would be in 2010, only if we meet unidentified criteria, and that could be canceled without notice.

We have fought hard over the years to get one of the best medical plans bargained for in the industry. Over the last four or five contracts, Boeing has been chipping away at those medical plans and that has cost us more out of pocket. Now with their record profits and backlog, they want to take away more. We realize that many in the community have to pay their own health insurance out of their own pocket. To have the company pay a majority of our health insurance is something we have bargained for over the years.

The Friday letter is correct when it says that most of the Machinists are only high school graduates. What the writer does not realize is that we graduates are the ones reading the drawings and the plans to put these multi-million dollar airplanes together and we have to point out the mistakes in those plans and drawings to those that made them, the college graduates, and have them corrected. We are continuously improving our processes to be better and faster at what we do for a living. We just want to be fairly compensated for it so we can enjoy life outside of Boeing.

Jake Ritland
Marysville