The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers scores significant, preliminary win against Boeing on alleged retaliatory firings. Boeing is expected to appeal.
Purchase of Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound's wholesale operation means lobstermen will have more control over the prices they get for their catch, a spokesman says.
"Labor and community groups supporting the efforts by Boeing workers to form a union will also be in attendance," the IAM's announcement states.
Evans, the IAM's lead organizer in North Charleston, and Ken Riley, the longtime president of the local longshoremen's union, are scheduled to speak at Friday's event.
With 51 percent of the 24,000 or so local machinists who voted saying yes to the pact, Boeing's " 'best and final' offer [now] guarantees assembly of the next 777 widebody jet and the fabrication of the plane's carbon-fiber wing" will be done at plants in the Puget Sound region.
Machinists, firefighters, Teamsters and other union members crowded into Meeting Hall B of the IAM's Seattle offices Thursday afternoon, just 13 hours before voting was scheduled to begin. They waved signs urging "Vote No," "Stop the War on Workers" and "Don't Sell Your Soul!"
The conflict in Washington State involves far more than a local dispute over wages and benefits. Boeing appears determined to set the bar higher in its labor relations. As is the trend in much of labor negotiations these days, the bosses have simply decided that moving forward, workers are going to have to forfeit the medical and retirement benefits their unions have previously secured.
Boeing's fight against its machinists raises a terrifying possibility about U.S. capitalism. It appears that instead of industrial growth translating into national prosperity, the United States is beginning to conform to what economists call the Iron Law of Wages, which says the natural price of labor is subsistence. The only reasonable pay for workers, the theory goes, is enough to sustain them to live and work to produce value for their bosses and nothing more.
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