Boeing offers union 30% wage hike, annual bonus in bid to end strike
Boeing Co. offered its largest union a 30% wage hike in a bid to break a stalemate that has shut down its aircraft manufacturing across the Pacific Northwest.
The revised contract includes reinstating a controversial annual bonus that was dropped from an earlier offer that was resoundingly defeated by members of the International Association of Machinists And Aerospace Workers union on Sept. 12, triggering the planemaker’s first major strike since 2008. Boeing has also doubled the bonus workers would get if the latest deal is passed, to $6,000.
Boeing said the revised offer is contingent on ratification by the end of the day on Sept. 27.
The planemaker’s shares jumped to session highs and were up 3% as of 2:25 p.m. in New York.
Roughly 33,000 Boeing workers have been on strike since Sept. 13, idling the planemaker’s main jetliner factories near Seattle. Workers overwhelmingly voted down the company’s earlier offer of a 25% general wage increase, after leaders of IAM District 751 initially demanded a 40% wage increase.
An extended walkout would worsen Boeing’s already strained financial situation. The company burned through more than $1 billion per month in cash in the first half of this year as it slowed commercial aircraft output to address quality lapses exposed after a near catastrophe in January. Boeing has also begun to furlough workers and take other steps to preserve cash during the strike.
(Updates with shares, additional detail from first paragraph.)
