Save Us All from Boeing!

SEPTEMBER 17—Now that was historic! District 751 head Jon Holden tried to dupe Boeing Machinists into swallowing a “historic” deal that met none of their needs, and they told him—and the bosses—loud and clear to shove it. The strike is on, and the powerful Machinists are well aware that they are the pacesetters for the entire working class. The tables can be turned on stagnant wages, uncertain retirement and the safety/quality crisis created by Boeing—and repeated in other industries. What would make all the difference to the outcome is for fighting Machinists to organize the battle to establish the union’s dominance over the bosses.

Striking workers mistrust Holden—and rightly so. He buckled before the strike began, and everything points toward a repeat performance. The IAM leadership recently pledged itself to ensuring Harris’s election, and now federal mediators serving under Biden/Harris are on the scene. Their purpose is to remind Holden of this promise and prepare another attempt at a sellout.

Holden clearly does not have what it takes to win this strike; but the real problem is his strategy. He wants Machinists to get “their fair share” without in any way challenging the bosses’ fundamental interests. Instead, his goal is to make the union a “full partner” of management when Boeing is the very image of this country’s decay. A “seat at the safety table” or on the company board is not a step forward; it is a setup to make the union the fall guy for all of Boeing’s future crimes.

Machinists know how to get things done. To rally the support of working people everywhere and win what they deserve, they should initiate strike committees to set their struggle on a course to put the union in control of all aspects of the build process. As a first step, these committees must build mass picket lines to shut the plants down tight and prevent scabbing. We reprint below a WV supplement issued on September 10, two days before the contract vote.

District 751 president Jon Holden instructed Machinists to come together on September 12 to “reset the trajectory of the aerospace industry,” declaring: “We are fighting for everyone.” Yes! But the contract he is recommending will not change the downward spiral of the company or the country. Angry workers are furious at Holden—they need and deserve so much more. The Machinists have the power and opportunity to lead the charge on behalf of the working class right now. The company knows it and has thrown a few bones to head off a fight by labor to impose its will on the bosses. Don’t get taken! Reject the TA, authorize strike action and organize the battle to win!

It is no secret that Boeing is going to hell. Machinists once took great pride in producing cutting-edge aircraft to transport people and cargo across the globe. But management, in pursuit of greater profit, has ruined everything. Workers are squeezed every which way, and chaos has been injected into the build process—creating hazards in the factories and disaster in the skies. Like Boeing, the whole country is falling apart, and the working class is suffering the consequences: Decent homes, quality healthcare and other basic necessities are increasingly out of reach, even while most work longer hours or multiple jobs. Things clearly must change and that’s only going to happen if workers take charge—at Boeing and in the country at large.

But rather than mobilize the union and its working-class allies to force Boeing to concede as much as possible, Holden and the other IAM leaders are praising the “historic” TA and its “never before seen improvements”—as if nothing more could be done. This retreat does not come out of nowhere but is born of their entire strategy: to get Boeing to recognize the union as “full partners.” What does the union have to gain from taking co-responsibility for management’s crimes? Any such partnership can only hold back union struggle. The bosses are the ones who created the entire mess in the first place and have proved themselves utterly incapable of solving the crises of their own making in a progressive manner. The same goes for their Democratic and Republican politicians, like Harris and Trump, who are busy trying to woo the working-class vote but have nothing to offer other than more hard times ahead.

There is a different path available that can actually win major gains and advance labor’s cause. The Machinists must step into the breach and seize as much of the reins as possible from the bosses. The goal should be not simply to “save Boeing from itself” but to save all working people from Boeing by the union taking control of the build process—crucially including safety and quality assurance. Not joint labor-management safety teams or a union seat on the company board of directors, but union safety monitors and quality inspectors with the power to shut down assembly on the spot. With the U.S. government using Boeing-manufactured equipment and munitions to create havoc around the world, particularly in Ukraine and Gaza, workers also need to fight to control where their products end up.

A strike to put the union on top at Boeing would be a lightning rod for workers everywhere, who not only want to beat back the attacks of their own bosses but also have taken to checking the aircraft make before buying a ticket. It could lift the striking AT&T workers in the South, propel ILA longshoremen into strike action when their contract expires at month’s end and shift the entire terrain for labor struggle in the U.S. Boeing and this country’s rulers have dug themselves into a deep hole, which they can only climb out of on the backs of workers. The Machinists have everything to gain by fighting to establish their dominance on the factory floor and showing the way forward for the working class. Let’s win this one!