The Boeing Co.’s Machinists will cast two major ballots over the next week.
On Saturday, they’ll vote whether accept or reject Boeing’s latest contract offer. And, if they haven’t voted already, Boeing employees (Machinists and SPEEA members alike) will vote in the presidential election.
Yesterday, Politico had this piece about Republican John McCain’s chances to “flip a blue state to red.”
Washington state is “one of the few places where McCain’s expertise and intervention on military matters have become political liabilities.”
The reason: the state’s Boeing Co. voters who have a grudge against the Arizona senator’s meddling in the U.S. Air Force tanker competition. As Politico notes, McCain’s visits here haven’t always been well received.
Sen. Barack Obama gained the support of Boeing Machinists after Sen. Hillary Clinton failed to secure the Democratic nomination. This commentary in Forbes on Obama and “big labor” indicates why the senator from Illinois has the support of unions.
The Boeing engineers union, which starts serious contract talks with the company today, isn’t political and hasn’t endorsed a candidate. However, SPEEA does have a federal and state candidate Web page.
Lastly, Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader commented on the tentative agreement reached in the Boeing Machinists’ strike:
Their 8-week long resistance against Boeing’s unpatriotic off-shoring agenda resulted in losses of an estimated $5 billion to the company — a hard blow to a corporation aiming to set a record profit for another consecutive year. Boeing, which earned a net profit of $4.07 billion last year, almost double from 2006, can afford to negotiate a fair contract taking into account inflation and rising costs of food and housing, even if that means the company’s grossly overpaid executives will have to share some of the tremendous wealth they’ve acquired.
This strike at Boeing was indicative of the situation at large in this country where we find giant corporations wrapped up in greed and corruption attempting to cheat workers out of their deserved wages, benefits, health care, and even their jobs as they send them to countries overseas run by oligarchs and dictators.
Cast your vote now in our poll about Boeing’s latest offer to the Machinists:
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