Boeing Employees Strike (2000)
Wed Feb 09, 2000
On this day in 2000, 19,000 of Boeing Company engineering and technical employees walked off the job in what historian Howard Zinn called "the biggest white-collar strike in the [U.S.] history".
The strike was the result of a breakdown in negotiations between Boeing and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEAA). Striking workers said the protest wasn't just about asking for more money, it was also to "improve the culture of the company and chart a new course for organized labor".
When asked if he thought the strike had a lasting impact on the legacy of labor unions, Charlie Bofferding, Executive Director of SPEAA, stated "I'd have to say certainly less than we would have liked...At that time, what SPEEA was going for was an attempt to rebrand the labor movement from the people who beat up bad management to the people who made working in America better for everyone. I don't know that that message stuck."
- Date: 2000-02-09
- Learn More: www.knkx.org, money.cnn.com.
- Tags: #Labor.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org
I remember my dad shit-talking about this strike when I was a kid. He was a scab, and would continue to be a scab until he retired.
He would also constantly complain that McDonnell Douglas had actually, functionally bought out Boeing, as their managers quickly took over most of the leadership positions in the company, and started cutting corners, treating employees worse and worse.
"Boeing used to be run by engineers, but now its run by accountants" was a phrase I heard often.
But my dad never figured out that that company culture shift was partially enabled by his and others unending opposition to the union.
Now, 25 years later, my dad retired to a mobile home after a life of alcoholism, mismanaging his finances, alienating everyone he's ever met, believing every right wing conspirscy theory he's ever heard...
...and Boeing has become increasingly, and literally dangerously dysfunctional and incompetent at producing aircraft, with every step they took on that path, moving the HQ to Chicago, opening the South Carolina plant to avoid the union, insane pressure on everyone in final assembly to meet deadlines at the cost of properly verifying and documenting said assembly had been done right, increasingly relying on contractors for more and more, which was supposed to cut costs, but ended up just causing an even more complex logistics chain, more defective parts, more paperwork for more people to argue over who was actually responsible for said defective parts...
...every one of those things was something my dad bemoaned, but never more than the union, which was always even worse, for vague and contradictory reasons.
That's all a drawn out and personalized way of me confirming to Bofferding that no, the message did not stick.