With a Little Help From Their Friends, Boeing Forces Union Workers to Sacrifice Pensions for Profit'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/With-a-Little-Help-From-Th-by-Move-to-Amend-Boeing_Campaign-Finance-And-Reform_Corporate-Fascism_Corporate-Personhood-14

With a Little Help From Their Friends, Boeing Forces Union Workers to Sacrifice Pensions for Profit's Sake
By Move to Amend
Exclusive to OpEdNews:
OpEdNews Op Eds 2/25/2014 at 06:00:01
By Keyan Bliss

In January, the Boeing Corporation bullied the members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) to accept a new contract forcing them to give up hard-won pensions, dismantle their health care, and reduce their wages. The effort to take away essential benefits from Washington workers was a well-calculated scheme by the world's largest airplane manufacturer. By exploiting bad economic conditions, it manipulated opportunistic politicians and even the union's own leadership in order to pressure workers to accept these concessions.



Boeing demanded the cuts to retirement and healthcare benefits in its initial offer to extend its current contract with organized labor in the Puget Sound region. This new contract will keep IAM workers' current pensions frozen while ending their defined-benefit plan and replacing it with a 401k plan, a trend among Fortune 100 companies looking to reduce benefit costs. The contract would allow the corporation to gut and/or replace health plans previously negotiated before they are taxed under the Affordable Care Act in 2018. It would also limit wage increases to one percent every other year with annual cost-of-living adjustments. If this were not enough, IAM workers would be barred from striking until the new contract expires in 2024.

There is no financial imperative for the aerospace-defense corporation to demand such sacrifices from their workers. In fact, Boeing is expected to exceed $4.7 billion in profits in 2013, and that's after increasing its dividends by $2 billion and repurchasing $10 billion in from shareholders. Local labor unions refused to sacrifice hard-won pensions during such times and rejected the contract in November by a margin of 2-to-1.

Rather than renegotiate its offer, Boeing threatened to leave its home in the Puget Sound all together and immediately solicited bids from 22 states desperate to secure thousands of quality manufacturing jobs. Not satisfied with this leverage, Boeing initiated a relentless public-relations campaign targeting Boeing workers in Seattle newspapers, radio advertisements, and even flyers distributed at local factories telling workers they would lose their jobs for refusing the corporate offer.

[AllyCat]

1. That's what they are doing where I work. They made record profits last year...

...but just don't want to contribute to that profit-filching pension anymore. No raises, pay cats..more for insurance. While the fat cats build new homes on the golf course. And we are a "non-profit".

[CrispyQ]

2. How much would a move like that cost Boeing - to move an entire plant?

More than the cost of honoring contracts with workers? I know that other states & municipalities will offer them all sorts of "tax free" deals incentives to move to their location, but it would still cost Boeing a lot, wouldn't it? How serious are they when they make a threat like this?

Corporations are a tool for the rich to behave without consequence.