Fed up with inflation and seizing a moment of labor power, workers at Boeing, AT&T and Southwest reject deals negotiated by union bosses
Frustrated by inflation eating into their paychecks and empowered by the United Auto Workers’ successful strikes last year, union members are sending a message to their own leaders: Do better.
In recent months, members have voted down contracts at Boeing, AT&T, Textron and other companies after their unions’ negotiating committees spent months hammering out deals for them to ratify.
Most dramatically, at Boeing, 94% of machinists in the company’s largest union voted in September against the proposed contract, which offered 25% wage increases over four years. Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter had never before rejected a contract recommended by their leaders.
The IAM chapter president had described the deal as a historic raise. “I would like to imagine he did everything he could to secure the best possible deal for his members,” said Josh McKenzie, who works at Boeing’s 737 factory in Renton, Wash. “At face value, it didn’t look bad. But the more I read it, the more it seemed like we’d be in pretty much the same boat.”
The typical U.S. union member still has higher earnings than workers who aren’t covered by a union. But the gap has narrowed in recent years as many unionized workers were locked into multiyear collective bargaining contracts that had been signed before the postpandemic inflation surge.
Cathy Creighton, a labor lawyer at Cornell University’s ILR School, said union leaders are running into extra resistance this year because the workforce is riled up.
“Employees are mad because they don’t have their fair share of the pie, and they want to go on strike,” she said
That sentiment helped propel a swath of dockworkers to strike last week, an action that ended only when port employers promised a higher pay increase than the one in their initial proposal. With a 62% raise in hand, the two sides are now positioned to negotiate over automation issues.
Workers are encouraged by a relatively tight labor market and by the UAW’s success securing a new contract last year with General Motors, Ford and Chrysler parent Stellantis, following a bold strategy of strikes at multiple locations.
The UAW negotiated a 25% wage bump over four years, along with a shorter time period to reach top pay, improved retirement benefits and the right to strike over plant closures. Even then, some of the votes to get to victory were nail-bitingly close.
If the UAW’s negotiations “had ended in a dismal failure, I think things would be different,” Creighton said.
Last month, some 5,000 workers at Textron’s Wichita, Kan.-based aviation unit, also represented by the IAM, voted overwhelmingly to reject a contract recommended by union leaders. They have been on strike since Sept. 23 and have yet to resume negotiations. The deal called for a 26% pay increase over four years.
“This is a culmination of all workers realizing that they have lost ground,” said Brian Bryant, international president of the IAM union, with 600,000 members. “This is a continuation of what you saw with the UAW—‘enough is enough.’”
When companies are negotiating multiple deals at once, union members take note. About 8,000 AT&T employees in California and Nevada represented by the Communications Workers of America union had worked without a contract since April. When the group’s bargaining committee offered a new contract proposal in September, members rejected it.
By then, the western workers had caught a tailwind: Their peers in several southeastern states were on strike over their own bargaining process. The telecom giant later reached tentative agreements with both groups. The two proposed contracts, including a sweetened agreement for employees in the West, are scheduled to tally votes on Oct. 18.
Sometimes leaders have strategic reasons for putting forward a deal they suspect their members will reject, particularly if the company is refusing to negotiate better terms. A “no” vote can embarrass the company and set off strikes.
In the case of the Boeing strike, the union leadership told members in a memo before the vote that they had “achieved the best contract we have ever had.”
Members reacted with outrage in online forums and on the shop floor, calling the pay raise paltry and criticizing the company’s move to do away with annual bonuses. Many were skeptical of a next-generation plane commitment. Some also wanted Boeing to restore pension benefits.
Jon Holden, president of the local Boeing machinists chapter, said he believes the union leaders needed to recommend the deal to get the company to agree to a 25% raise and other improvements. “We had to recommend it or we would have been at 18% with no job security,” he said. “We negotiated the best contract we could short of a strike.”
Boeing declined to comment. Talks between the two sides stalled this week.
It often takes a few tries to reach a deal in the airline industry. Bargaining can stretch on for years, with government rules that make it difficult to strike even after union members reject contracts.
Alaska Airlines’s flight attendants voted down a tentative agreement in August, which offered an average raise of 32% over three years.
Southwest Airlines’s flight attendants in December rejected a tentative agreement with the company that would have included an initial 20% pay increase followed by 3% annual raises in subsequent years.
In January, Southwest’s flight attendants voted in favor of authorizing a strike for the first time, though negotiations continued. The union ratified a new four-year contract in April, which included larger pay raises. It also elected a new president who ran on a promise to repair a disconnect between union leaders and members.
This article originally appeared on The Wall Street Journal.
Comments