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- cross-posted to:
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Boeing is offering its staff a 25% pay rise over four years in a bid to avoid a strike that could potentially shut down its assembly lines as early as Friday.
Union leaders representing more than 30,000 employees have urged the workers to support the proposal, describing it as the best contract they had ever negotiated.
If approved, the agreement would be an important achievement for Boeing’s new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, who faces pressure to fix the company’s quality and reputational issues.
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Read: Boeing could have been paying it’s workers 25% more, but was too greedy to do anything about it.
And they want to stretch it over 4 years because “fuck you “
I read it as Boeing expects inflation to be 6% or more per year for the next 4 years. (this is probably the most charitable read to Boeing you can come up with)
Boeing didn’t propose this contract unilaterally. It was a negotiation. They think this is the minimum raise that the workers will agree to.
Every time some headline comes out with significant increases, it always turns out to be ‘over x years’.
This isn’t a 25% raise, it’s taking Boeing at their word they will give 6.25% every year only for the next four. Six percent doesn’t cover the inflated costs of anything anymore, let alone allow for wealth building or retirement saving.
These people would never strike again if they got a real 25% raise and a guaranteed bump equal to twice the inflation in the years to come. But as always, when the C suite’s horizon is only as far as next quarter, the people are seen merely as an expense - not an investment.
it may cover future inflation but they needed it the last four years whee it would have been not bad.
I consider any contract for raise in the future that doesn’t reference inflation invalid because nobody who understands the terms would agree to such a contract and therefore we know someone didn’t understand the terms.
I agree, the last four years have been rough. They could just make the 25% raise not only effective immediately, but retroactive from the beginning of the pandemic.
According to a quick search, the average IAM worker earns a salary of about $70k. This retroactive payment would cost about two billion dollars. They can afford it.
It’s been about 3.2% all year, and with the very notable exception of 2021/2022 Covid-gouging years, it was more like 1.5%
6.25% per year sounds pretty good.
The problem, usually, is that that number is an average from a variety of different areas of life. If you can expect to make purchases from all those places at once then it’s mostly fine but that’s not what happens.
Instead, housing and food shoot through the fucking roof, especially housing where a lot of people tend to live. Once the solution is “move far away from your community just to be able to afford a home” then that solution is basically just invalid. Luxury goods don’t up nearly as fast, they have real competition and people can, usually, not buy those products so there needs to be some level of sanity there. You end up with a situation where poor people end up experiencing a rate of inflation far higher and more stressful than the average implies. And guess what? Most people are poor these days, even the ones who’d like to not believe it.
And then you add on to that that if your company does not give you a raise based on inflation by default then even if they match it and pat themselves on the back you did not recieve a raise. Matching inflation or less means that you’ve lost salary even if the number is technically higher. You only get a raise when your buying power exceeds the year before.
Right, Grocery prices for example have increased by 25 percent over the past four years, outpacing overall inflation of 19 percent during the same period
It isn’t per year though, it only lasts 4.
Then they negotiate again, I assume?
Most of what you have said is wrong.
It is a four year contract. The parties negotiated the rates for the next four years, once the contract is ratified it is binding. Boeing will be required to pay according to the wage scale. Its not boeing’s word, its a contract and the union has remidies if boeing violates the terms if the contract. This is how most union contracts work. Wage changes are spread out over the term of the contract. This is normal.
Also the raise is not 6.25% per year. That’s not how percentages work. The average would be 5.8% as annual percentage raises are cumulative. If they negotiated a 6.25% annual raise they would have a 27% raise over the term of the contract.
It is deliberately misleading to report raises for the life of the contract. It makes the win sound better in the headline than it is.
I realize the math is marginally inaccurate - precision wasn’t really the goal of what I wrote. We’re on the same page so far as the disingenuous headline goes.
Where we disagree I suppose is the contract being binding. You’re right of course, from a legal perspective, a signed contract is an agreement that must be upheld. When I wrote that it was taking Boeing at its word, I was leaning more into a possibility of leadership changing their minds.
As a hypothetical example:
Two years down the line the executives decide to ‘review’ the contracts and determine an alternative understanding of the principles of the agreement which leads to them reverting to the previous payscale. Then the union threatens to strike again, legal action might ensue, maybe months go by of back and forth with the corporation dragging their metaphorical feet at every opportunity.
Eventually this ends up in court with Boeing being told to quit the shit and pay what they agreed, maybe plus 5% as a ‘pemalty’ for bad faith operation. Finally, the agreed upon payscale resumes with backpay, plus that 5%. Workers aren’t exactly happy, but they aren’t angry anymore.
All the while, those extra tens of millions were sitting somewhere, collecting interest for Boeing. By the time it all gets straightened out and they accept a fine, they’ve made an extra few million. At the end of the quarter, or the year, the executives that set out on this path take a generous bonus.
All I was really getting at by commenting about the contract was that corporate greed exists - in Boeing of all places this is a certainty.
Giant companies pull these maneuvers all the time at the expense of the people they employ, their own customers, or both. I don’t think most of what I wrote was wrong. Inaccurate maybe? I can live with that.
your hypothetical shows a complete lack of understanding.
if they do these things all the time as you say, you would have a real example rather than a purely hypothetical one.
your delusional fantasy is not reality
Hahaha cheers mate for the laugh. Didn’t realize I was wasting my time with you.
You’re wasting everyone’s time by making up problems with a contract. Multi year contracts are standard. There may be a lot wrong with the contract, but the fact that its a multi year contract like every normal union contract isn’t one of them.
No one who negotiates union contracts is worried that an employer might randomly decide to revert a negotiated payscale.
The point I was trying to convey is that companies are run by people and people are corruptable. You’re correct to say there’s no reason to think any specific contact would be violated. It’s folly however, to think companies never take action against a union as a whole or a worker individually.
Given the recent whistleblowers that have stopped being alive in recent Boeing memory, I don’t think it’s alarmist to suggest they might not be a trustworthy bunch.
Either way, my apologies for the way I half heartedly wrote something the other day.
Yes, companies are corrupt. However, the way you described it cannot happen. Boeing is smart enough to not try to fuck over workers in a way that they are guaranteed to lose and all but ensures an immediate strike.
Even after the contract expires, they have to continue paying at the previous rate. If boeing wanted to pull something they would be smart enough to do it in a more subtle and effective way.
Strike until you blow the doors off the place!
Won’t even outpace inflation at that rate nor does it fix the past 4 years of hyper inflation. Just as tone deaf as you’d expect from a company that cannot produce reliable air travel after being able to provide it for decades before.
Generally the Fed tries for 2-3% inflation. Only time will tell if they can hit that target or not, but it is the only target number we can all agree on even if we can never agree on what the real world will bring.
I like that Boeing knows they need this win that badly.
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