Boeing risks losing billions as 33,000 workers vote to strike

Enlarge / Union members cheer during a news conference following a vote count on the union contract at the IAM District 751 Main Union Hall in Seattle, Washington, US, on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

More than 33,000 unionized Boeing workers went on strike Friday, rejecting what they say were unfair terms of a deal the embattled aerospace company tentatively reached with their union.

The rejected deal tried and failed to win over workers by offering a 25 percent wage increase and promised to build Boeing’s next jet in the Puget Sound region in Washington, which Boeing claimed offered “job security for generations to come.”

But after International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 751 president Jon Holden urged the union to accept the deal—which Boeing said was the “largest-ever general wage increase” in the company’s history—hundreds of Boeing employees immediately began resisting ahead of a Thursday vote that ultimately doomed the deal.