SOLIDARITY ALERT: SPEEA and IFPTE Stand in SOLIDARITY with IAM Striking Workers at Boeing

SPEEA President Jon Dimas (left) pledges the union’s support for striking Machinists Union members to IAM District 751 President Jon Holden, after 96% of Machinists voted to strike against Boeing. SPEEA/IFPTE 2001 photo by Bryan Corliss

SPEEA/IFPTE Local 2001 is strongly supporting Machinists Union members at Boeing, who voted by a 96% margin on Sept. 12 to go on strike against the company.

Some 33,000 IAM members working for Boeing in the Seattle area and Portland, Ore., went on strike at 12:01 a.m. (Pacific time) Friday.

The strike -- the first Machinists strike at Boeing since 2008 -- will have a significant impact on SPEEA members' day-to-day work.

"Our message to members is absolutely do not volunteer to do any work normally done by IAM members," said John Dimas, the president of SPEEA, which is IFPTE Local 2001.

Dimas attended the press conference in Seattle that followed the counting of the ballots in the contract vote and personally pledged SPEEA’s support to IAM District 751 Jon Holden. 

SPEEA members will have to comply if directly ordered by a Boeing manager to do work normally done by Machinists, Dimas acknowledged. "But Council Reps should make sure that all their members know to immediately contact them if this happens."

In the contract that was overwhelmingly rejected, Boeing offered IAM members a 25% wage increase over four years, along with increases in 401(k) contributions. However, that fell far short of that 40% raise that Machinists – who had gone eight years with average raises of 0.5% a year – were demanding.

IAM members also sought the restoration of a defined benefit pension, which they conceded in 2014 as part of a deal that ensured they and SPEEA members would design and build Boeing’s 777X aircraft. Boeing had threatened to take that work to non-union factories in other states.

In the rejected contract Boeing had also offered to guarantee for the next four years that any new airplane program it launches would be built by union workers around Seattle and Portland. That promise carried little weight, however, given that Boeing already has said it won’t launch a new airplane before 2030.

Read SPEEA’s statement here, and learn more about the IAM strike here.