How long is the Machinists union strike going to last? Depends on who you ask.

“Honestly, I thought they’d be back already talking,” said Joe Perraeault, a Renton 737 worker from Bothell who was picketing outside the Boeing Co.’s Everett plant on Tuesday. “I thought we’d have a contract by Friday.”

Electrician Steve Brown of Arlington was less optimistic. “Since they haven’t gone back to the table, I think it’s going to be a long one, at least a month.”

John Arntzen of Shoreline said he thinks it will run even longer. “I’m sure it will last through October,” the 737 worker said.

Arntzen may be right, analysts said Tuesday.

The last time Machinists walked out, they stayed out for 69 days, said T.M. Sell, a Highline Community College professor and author of a book on Boeing. This time, he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see it go a couple months. But after a couple months, the pain begins to pile up for each side.”

Boeing’s got a lot of work to do before it presents the International Association of Machinists with a new contract offer, Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia said.

“It’s not just a question of tweaking the balance,” he said. The union overwhelmingly rejected Boeing’s contract offer. If the vote had been close “it would be just a matter of fine tuning,” but it wasn’t.

The fact that 86 percent of Machinists voted to reject the contract sets the stage for a longer struggle, Aboulafia said. “Eighty-six percent implies they want to fight a battle.”

The IAM strike against Boeing could become a rallying point for the whole American labor movement, Aboulafia continued. Labor holds a lot of high cards in this poker game – Boeing is profitable again, airlines have planes on order and want them now, and unlike Northwest Airlines and its mechanics, there’s no big pool of replacement workers for Boeing to call in to keep the operation going.

If other unions throw their support behind the IAM, funneling them cash and other aid, that would enable the union to stay out longer, he said.

“You can make an argument for them doing that because this is the last place they can do that,” Aboulafia said. “This is the place to strike.”

There’s only one problem, he said: Machinists are asking for the things Boeing is least likely to give.

Job security, Aboulafia said, is “a quaint relic of the past. Nobody anywhere has any job security.”

And pension increases have been the “kiss of death” for airlines and other manufacturers, he added. Boeing knows that aerospace is a cyclical industry, with booms and busts. Boeing doesn’t want to get stuck with high pension costs when the next bust comes.

“If Boeing’s revenue gets cut in half, and they’re still making their pension payments, that can clobber their profits,” he said. “That can wipe out their profits.”

At the same time, Sell said Boeing handed the union a cause to rally round when it gave incoming chief executive James McNerney his $22 million pension supplement. “That puts the company in an awkward position,” he said when it claims it can’t afford to increase pensions for the long-time workers who actually assemble the planes.

Profits and Boeing’s stock price have climbed steadily in recent years, and Machinists deserve to share in the success they helped build, Sell said. “It’s a perfectly legitimate question: What’s our chunk of that.”

But at the same time, the union could hurt itself in the long run if it fights too hard and strikes too long, Sell said.

“The next time there’s a 787-style decision, that goes into the mix, and you’ll still have everybody and their sister willing to give away the store to get Boeing to relocate,” he said, harking back to Boeing’s nationwide search for a manufacturing site in 2003.

Boeing also has to weigh options, and balance “short-term pain with long-term damage to (its) cost structure if they agree to (the union’s) demands.”

On the picket line, strikers said they’d be happier if negotiators were talking again.

“The three-day weekend’s over,” said Brenda Manry, a Machinist from Bellevue. “They’ve had a break; let’s talk.”

Ron Marshall of Everett, a 777 worker, agreed. “They both say they’re willing to talk, but nobody knows how to pick up the telephone,” he said. “That tells you how it’s going.”

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