How to Put the Machinists on Top

Ever since his announcement of the strike’s end, District 751 head Jon Holden has been busy proclaiming “victory” over Boeing. However, actual events tell a different tale. Holden’s team never wanted the strike in the first place and demobilized it at every step, including by keeping strike pay low and picket lines sparse and devoid of initiative to stop scabs. This sabotage was rooted not in incompetence or even simple malice, but rather a deeply flawed strategy that refused to take the fight to Boeing and create real trouble for the bosses and their politicians.

Playing the waiting game of “one day longer, one day stronger”—instead of organizing the battle to make Boeing buckle—only dragged out the strike and demoralized the ranks who were eager to fight. There was a clear path to victory: Rally the 33,000-strong Machinists and the rest of labor at Boeing and beyond to halt all work and parts deliveries. Holden’s strategy, though, ran in the very opposite direction.

Despite this misleadership, the Machinists held firm for weeks and backed Boeing into a corner. But when the CEO bared his claws and threatened to burn the company to the ground to punish the union, Holden & Co. predictably played dead rather than seize the moment to finish the job. With union officials outright abandoning the battle and many Machinists feeling the pressure to pay the bills, almost the exact same contract that had earlier been rejected two-to-one was rammed through. None of the main strike demands were met. This is not what victory looks like.

IAM leaders further throttled the strike by aligning the union behind the bosses’ Democratic Party. Pledging to ensure Harris’s victory, they first tried to head off the strike and then worked to keep it under wraps. Matters were not to get out of hand as Harris scrambled for working-class votes. In the end, of course, the union bureaucracy failed to deliver Harris a victory. But by delivering an end to the strike before Election Day in collaboration with Labor Secretary Julie Su, they did more for her than for the union membership.

If it had been pursued to establish union dominance over Boeing, the strike could have won decisively and improved the position of this country’s working class in the face of increasingly hard times ahead. But even now, all is not lost. It is crucial to take stock of the strike in order to put the union on the right track in anticipation of attacks to come.

As production gears up, Machinists will be confronted with the safety and quality crises that have compounded all the problems of the job. Management has announced a major round of layoffs, which might bypass Machinists for the moment but will ax the jobs of other union members, such as SPEEA engineers. The threat to move production to non-union plants—wielded by the company yet again to undercut the strike and get its way—hangs over the union’s head. On top of it all, Trump’s election has opened up a new period of uncertainty for the labor movement.

Machinists would do well to bring forward a leadership that can successfully guide the union through this turbulence. Foldin’ Holden strangled the strike and forced financially strapped workers to vote for the contract even though they recognized its shortcomings. With the storm clouds of new battles already gathering, the Holden crew talks of union members working to “bring this company back to financial success.” To turn things around, Machinists must reject this perspective—which can only come at the expense of the workforce—and instead look to fight for their class interests against the bosses in each and every case.

In particular, “no” and “yes” voters should join forces to push through a leadership change—not just a change in the faces at the top, but also a change in strategy. Holden himself catapulted into his current position in response to the 2013-14 betrayal of his predecessor—a betrayal that cost the Machinists their pension. But Holden never had a plan capable of getting it back.