EVERETT – Mary Manley returned to work at the Boeing Co. on Monday, after a layoff that lasted more than three years.
On Wednesday, she paid her Machinists union dues. Thursday, she voted to go on strike. And on Friday, she brought her grandson to the union’s Everett hall, where she signed up for picket line duty.
“I get in the door, and we go out the door,” Manley said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
The first day of the International Association of Machinists strike against Boeing passed peacefully in Everett on Friday. More than a dozen picketing Machinists stood waving signs along the sidewalks outside the Boeing gate off Airport Road, while blues music boomed out of John Jenkins’ sport utility vehicle.
“As long as I’ve got my music playing, I’ll be all right,” the 767 worker said.
There was no sign that either side was prepared to head back to the bargaining table soon. There were no plans to meet for new negotiations over the weekend.
Friday’s calm was a sharp contrast to the loud, angry marches and heated anti-Boeing rhetoric on Thursday, when 86 percent of IAM-represented workers voted to reject the company’s contract offer and go on strike.
In doing so, union members turned down $6,000 in cash bonuses that could have become $9,000 if they had deposited them into their 401(k)-style retirement accounts. The contract offer also included incentive bonuses and a wage increase that would have pushed the average pay for Machinists to $62,000 a year.
It was, Boeing spokesman Chaz Bickers said, “a comprehensive contract that had many benefits for our employees.”
Machinists picketing Friday said the strike isn’t about the dollars. “Everybody realizes we’re making excellent money,” said Dennis Van Hoy, a mechanic from Edmonds.
In fact, for 777 worker Andy Boersma of Arlington, who was laid off in 2002 and just recalled in May, the money was hard to pass up. “Being laid off for three years, them throwing $9,000 in your face, that’s pretty attractive,” he said.
But the contract’s fine print was not nearly as attractive as the headlines, the strikers said. Changes in health insurance plans would have eaten up big chunks of the wage increases, some said.
Boeing also proposed eliminating retiree health insurance for incoming workers. Manley said that’s what prompted her strike vote. “I don’t have the right to cut someone else’s throat.”
Maintenance worker Greg Southard of Arlington said he was opposed to contract language that allows Boeing to use outside contractors to do work that used to be done by union personnel.
And while Boeing offered a 10 percent increase in pension, most picketers said they were angry that Boeing wasn’t willing to offer more.
The offer was particularly grating, Van Hoy said, after Boeing’s board granted new chief executive James McNerney a $22 million pension supplement in his first days on the job.
“I’d like to sit down,” he said, “no union people, no company people, just sit down across the table from McNerney and ask, ‘Why?’”
Jenkins and other veteran Machinists said they’ve been saving in anticipation of a strike ever since the unpopular 2002 contract, so they’re ready for a long walkout.
“I could go for a year,” Jenkins said. “This time, I’m prepared. Ninety percent of us were prepared.”
It will be harder on newly rehired workers such as Boersma, however. “I can go about 30 days, and then it gets tough,” he said.
Van Hoy was optimistic it won’t come to that.
“I don’t think it’s going to last long,” he said. “We’re hoping they come to their senses and don’t ruin the business.”
“We want to reach an agreement,” Bickers said, but one that makes sense for both workers and the company.
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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