Strikes are rare in the labor movement these days. Back in labor’s heyday in the mid-century, strikes were a common strategy used by unions and their members to extract improved wages, benefits, and working conditions from recalcitrant employers.
But these days, with free trade agreements used as a threat by employers to shut plants down and move jobs overseas, labor in general has shied away from using its ultimate negotiating weapon of striking.
Prolonged strikes don’t just hurt employers – they hurt the striking workers too. And healthy corporate employers are better positioned to weather a long strike than hourly workers who are often surviving paycheck to paycheck.
But over the last month, machinists at Boeing, America’s leading aircraft manufacturer with a market cap of nearly $100 billion, have been on strike seeking unprecedented wage increases along with improved health benefits and a reinstatement of the defined pension benefits that they lost a decade ago.
Back then the company threatened to move its aircraft production out of Seattle if the workers did not give up their defined benefit pension plans. The workers reluctantly and narrowly agreed to the change. They have regretted it ever since.
Boeing has been hobbled over the last five years by poor management resulting in multiple airliner crashes and other structural mishaps on their airplanes. Boeing, once the crown jewel of manufacturing know-how and engineering is now often used as a punchline by late-night comics because of its recent run of incompetence.
With the company seeking to make a turnaround and regain its reputation, it needs its machinists to be producing quality products. Both sides are vulnerable now after enduring a month-long strike, but Boeing seems to be more vulnerable.
Last week the two sides came to a tentative agreement that would result in improved health benefits along with an unprecedented 35 percent raise over four years for most machinists.
But the union members rejected the proposed agreement by a nearly 2 to 1 margin, sending both sides back to the bargaining table with an ultimatum to union leadership that they should not come back without a reinstatement of the pension as part of any package.
With Americans living on average 15 years post-retirement, the security provided by a pension to Americans who routinely are unable to save sufficiently to properly fund their retirements, is vitally important.
But pensions only have value to those employees who remain employed long enough to vest those benefits – typically ten years – and then go on to work long enough – usually at least 30 years – to earn a retirement benefit that coupled with Social Security will afford them to chance to live comfortably in retirement.
The downside of a pension is that it often forces folks to stay in an employment situation that they no longer enjoy for long periods of time, just to “get to retirement.” Life gets wasted waiting for retirement.
From my perspective, employees should have a choice about how they want to receive compensation, including medical benefits, retirement, and wages. I also think it would make sense, given the savings deficits that Americans face, that a national pension plan be implemented for all who want to participate, similar to the state pension plans that benefit state employees and teachers.
Retirement security is vital for Americans. How we get there can take many different forms.
The Law Office of Eric R. Brown 
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