On strike on Labor Day

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, September 4, 2005

EVERETT – For Michael Neff, it’s simple.

“If it wasn’t for strong unions, where would you be?” the striking Machinist said Sunday.

American unions “are not like what they used to be,” said Dave Epstein, also on strike against the Boeing Co. “Still,” he said, “without having a union, without having one big voice … we’d be like Wal-Mart.”

Kevin Nortz / The Herald John Bogdan shouts with a group of striking Machinists as a car drives into a Boeing parking lot on Airport Road in Everett Sunday morning. More than 18,000 Boeing Machinists are on strike, trying to force the company to improve its contract offer.

More than 18,000 Boeing workers in Kansas and the Northwest are on strike this Labor Day. In Snohomish County, union workers at the Kimberly Clark paper mill and union drivers at Community Transit are also involved in contentious contract talks.

The issues in the International Association of Machinists strike against Boeing are much like those labor faces across the nation in the 21st century – improving pensions for aging baby boomers, stopping the flow of jobs offshore and capping rising health care costs.

But conversations on the picket line and in the union halls also swirl around themes as old as the labor movement itself: solidarity, a fair share for workers and fighting what many union members feel is corporate greed.

The strikers know not everyone in the community will agree or support them. With their average pay of more than $59,000 a year, “they’d love to have our wages and everything,” Epstein said.

But strikers say there’s more at stake than their paychecks.

“It’s probably really hard for people to understand who haven’t been in a union, what we’re doing and why we’re doing it,” he added. “It appears that we’re just being greedy. All that you ever hear about is the bonuses.”

Boeing workers are among the best-paid workers in the Puget Sound area, and why not, the strikers said.

“We make Boeing the No. 1 company in the world, they should pay us No. 1,” said John Jenkins, manning an Airport Road picket line on Friday.

The high pay for Boeing workers forces other companies around the Sound to increase pay and benefits as well to keep their workers happy, said Gurdon Ellis of Monroe, a former Boeing worker who is now with BAE Systems in Everett. “Boeing sets the bar for all other contracts,” he said.

But if the union doesn’t make a stand now, those good-paying, high-benefit Boeing jobs will go away, the strikers said.

Boeing has already slashed its work force, taking work away from Machinists on its payroll and giving it to outside vendors, they said. Union ranks have fallen from nearly 45,000 in the mid-’90s to less than half that now.

“If we didn’t walk out on this one,” said Curtis Glaze, a striking Boeing worker from Lake Stevens, “there wouldn’t be a union.”

In the last three years, Boeing’s stock price has doubled, much to the benefit of board members and top executives, Neff said. Why not share that with the workers who made it happen, he and others ask.

“The employees of IAM are not looking to be greedy, we’re looking for fairness,” said Charles Kane, a Machinist from Everett.

The pension benefit paid to new chief executive James McNerney is an example of what’s wrong with the company, Epstein said. “That’s the thing that’s hard to swallow, the $22 million we pay him, then you turn around and we’re asking for pensions and they say, ‘No, we can’t.’”

Pensions and outsourcing both are issues for Linda Stickney of Everett. She said she’s worked in two Boeing shops that the company has closed in recent years, sending the work to contractors.

She has a little more than six years left until she can retire, and she just wants to know there will be a job for her at Boeing until then.

“None of us know that we’re going to be able to retire from this company,” Stickney said. And even if she does get to retire from Boeing, the pension is “not enough to live on.”

“We just want some security in our retirement,” she said Sunday as she and a handful of others walked what they called an informational picket outside the gates of the Port of Everett, where ships hauling parts for Boeing are unloaded. The union removed the unauthorized line after a few hours.

Many strikers say they’ve benefited from the concessions wrung from Boeing in past walkouts, and they’re striking now to preserve benefits for Boeing workers of the future.

Boeing proposed cutting retiree health care for future workers, Epstein said. “It has to do with the other people coming up behind us,” he said. “If we don’t look out for them, there wouldn’t be anything for them.”

“That’s why there’s a union,” Glaze said, “right there.”

Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.