Boeing and its striking workers have reached an agreement in principle, the <a href="http://www.time.news/boeing-workers-approve-strike/” title=”Boeing workers approve strike”>IAM-District 751 union that represents them announced Saturday, more than a month after the start of the labor dispute.
“We received a negotiated proposal (…) worthy of your consideration,” the union, which represents some 33,000 striking workers, published on the X network, noting that it will be put to a vote on Wednesday, October 23.
“We look forward to our employees’ vote on this negotiated proposal,” the aircraft manufacturer responded to AFP on Saturday.
In this new agreement, Boeing offers a 35% wage increase over four years.
Previously it had offered between 25% and 30%, when the union demanded a 40% increase.
Workers were also pushing to reinstate a traditionally employer-paid pension plan, which Boeing retired in 2014, but they did not get it.
These retirement plans were for decades a workplace staple in the United States, but they are now rare as the responsibility for preparing for old age has shifted from the employer to the employee.
The strike has paralyzed the group’s two main factories since September 13: Renton, which produces the 737, its best-selling aircraft, and Everett, which manufactures the 777, 767 and various military aircraft.
Despite negotiations, which began in May and have been underway with federal mediators since September, deep differences remain between the Seattle-area IAM machinists union and Boeing management over the next collective bargaining agreement.
– Measures and consequences –
In recent weeks, the airline announced numerous measures to preserve and then replenish its cash flow, which will mean a reduction of around 10% of its total workforce in the coming months.
At the end of 2023, the group employed more than 170,000 people worldwide.
Among the 17,000 jobs that will be lost are executives, managers and operators, according to CEO Kelly Ortberg, for whom the company must “align its workforce with its financial reality.”
Boeing also announced $5 billion in pretax charges in its third-quarter accounts, partly due to the strike but also due to the halting of 767 Freighter production and global production delays.
A serious incident on an Alaska Airlines plane last January led the United States Federal Aviation Administration to strengthen oversight of Boeing’s production processes.
According to an estimate released Friday by the Anderson Economic Group (AEG), the five weeks of strike cost a total of $7.6 billion in direct losses to the company, including at least $4.35 billion for Boeing and $1.77 billion for their suppliers.
Boeing also maintained that another consequence of the strike was the postponement of the delivery of its first 777X airplanes, from 2025 to 2026.
© Agence France-Presse