Boeing Machinist Union ends three-month strike and can start making fighter planes again – Jalopnik

Union members at Boeing’s St. Louis factories have finally voted to end the second-longest strike in the company’s history, ending an ordeal that has hampered production of the Pentagon’s air fleet. By a margin of two-thirds and at the insistence of the union leadership itself, the engineers agreed to the Seattle-based aircraft manufacturer’s fifth offer, excluding the offer the union made unilaterally of its own accord.

Three months of strikes have earned them a five-year contract that includes: a 24% pay increase (8% in the first year and 4% per year thereafter), a $6,000 signing bonus, and more vacation and sick leave, per year. Missouri independent and the Intelligence. That’s not as big a blow as workers originally demanded, but it’s also more than Boeing’s first four offers. Negotiate! After three months without a job, and with the holidays just around the corner, it seems the union has decided not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Work resumed on Sunday.

The strike essentially halted work on all of these issues, making this both a national security situation and a corporate tragedy. Welcome to the industrial-military complex. Fortunately, that drama is over and hardworking Americans can go back to defending the country for a good wage. It’s also good for Boeing to get a few more headlines behind it. The whole affair has also brought some changes for the company: the vice president of labor relations, Mike Fitzsimmons, left Boeing midway through the strike, according to Bloomberg. That said, it still has a long way to go before its reputation is fully restored.