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Ron Wanttaja |
The weeks after my first report seemed to blend
into a mixture of rumor, hope, and picket duty. The controversy regarding our
medical coverage was soon sorted out; the COBRA program would ensure
continuation with no break. The weather stayed somewhat fair; while showers
moved through during my picket shifts, more often than not the skies stayed
dry.
Boeing and SPEEA negotiators again met with the
mediator during early March. Boeing made a third offer; since it contained
only minor differences from the first offer, the union negotiators declined to
even take it to the membership.
The company then declared an impasse; they would
impose a new engineering contract with or without approval of the membership.
This declaration only affected those members of the bargaining unit who were
not honoring the strike or who returned to work. The contract the company
instituted was the first offer ... the one rejected by 99% of the union
membership.
As one might expect, this had the effect of tightening resolve even
further. Still, some engineers did trickle back to work After all, few had
been prepared for a protracted strike.
Picket shifts got quieter. A small hard-core of
individuals showed up for each shift, but the numbers slowly dwindled as
people found temporary jobs to tide them over. While there were between 15,000
and 18,000 of us still on strike (depending on whether you believed SPEEA or
the company), many folks in the bargaining unit never walked the picket line.
Much of that was probably the basic conservative bent of many members ...
they'd strike to show their dissatisfaction, but didn't, at heart, didn't
support unions. Some took the opportunity for long, relaxed
vacations.
I don't fault these folks. They walked out and
stayed out, and I'm satisfied with that. I even took a week off myself,
visiting friends in Washington, D.C. Before I left, though, I talked to my
co-picketers so they'd know I wasn't abandoning them.
Throughout it all, the local Teamsters and the members of the
International Association of Machinists (IAM — the union representing
Boeing's production workers) stood by us. On our day shifts, we got to be
quite the connoisseurs of horn-honking. We soon learned which trucking
companies were more likely to blow their horns as they passed the picket
lines. Oak Harbor Freight Lines and UPS were practically guaranteed to sound
off on the way by. Other lines tended toward silence. One truck driver had
what must have been a horn from a diesel locomotive on his rig ... he hauled
down on the chain three blocks away, and it sounded like he was parked in our
back pockets. We were doing "We're-not-worthy" bows by the time he drove by,
still blowing, grinning like a madman.
I was really touched by one bit of contact. I had a
strike poster in the back window of my car. Late one morning, the doorbell
rang. It was a UPS driver with a delivery.
"Are you the one on strike?" he asked as I signed
the clipboard. "Boy, are you guys ever doing a good job. I can't believe how
Boeing tried to shaft you guys. Hang in there, brother. They're going to cave
in."
Donations poured in to our strike fund, both in the
form of money and in foodstuffs for our food banks. One enthusiastic farmer
even dropped off a truckload of onions ... which promptly left SPEEA's
headquarters building practically uninhabitable. The onions became a real
source of humor, with every strike email list imploring members to stop by
headquarters to pick up a sack of onions and including tongue-in-cheek recipes
for "Onions Au Gratin" or "Onions Flambe."
Some suggestions for the onions included unlikely
combinations with Boeing CEO Phil Condit, President Harry Stonecipher, or H.R.
head Jim Dagnon. However, these worthies had taken a very low profile. They
backed off on making public comments on the strike or the
engineers,
About two weeks later, rumors spread that the
company and the union were engaged in secret negotiations. An email from my
union area representative pooh-poohed the rumors. He'd been around
headquarters, he'd talked to the union lawyers, and no one knew anything about
any ongoing negotiations. Oh, and did we want any onions? The next morning —
March 17th, St. Patrick's Day — the union and Boeing announced a tentative
settlement. The AFL-CIO had worked with Boeing, and the federal mediator had
suggested quiet, off-the-record talks that paid off.
With one exception, the company had given the union all
it had asked for: continuation of the current life insurance coverage, no
payments for medical insurance, and guaranteed cost-of-living raises as well
as merit raises.
The exception, though, raised a storm. While the
company had given the hourly employees a 10% bonus, the new SPEEA offer was a
flat $1,000 bonus — with another $1,500 to come if the company met certain
commercial-aircraft delivery goals. Even the full $2,500 hardly constituted a
5% bonus for the average SPEEA-represented employee ... and the IAM bonus
hadn't been tied to production goals.
Controversy raged on the email lists and discussion
groups. Few seemed to support the contract. One of my co-workers, who had
previously told me he wouldn't be able to afford to strike more than two
weeks, urged folks to reject the contract and said he'd stay out as long as it
took. An informal poll taken on one email list indicated that about two-thirds
of the people planned on rejecting the contract.
The announcement of the tentative settlement was
made on Friday; the vote would be Sunday. Many complained of the short-fused
schedule. The full text of the contract wouldn't even be available before the
vote.
On Saturday, I was scheduled for the 2:00-5:00 p.m.
picket shift. The day was windy, with a solid overcast and rain squalls moving
through the area. It was a strange shift. A feeling of unreality seemed to
hang overhead. Was this our last picket — or would we be back out Tuesday
morning for the 2:00 a.m. shift?
The wind whirled my poncho and tugged at my picket sign.
People still honked and waved, though a few shouted a puzzled, "Isn't the
strike over?" We stood in clumps, discussing the contract. As opposed to the
strident tones in the online discussions groups, people on the line were more
thoughtful, and seemed to support a settlement.
The sun edged out between the clouds a few minutes
before the end of the shift. I'd chosen my picket sign with care this day ...
a dry, new sign, with the normal "ON STRIKE" poster on one side and the "NO
NERDS, NO BIRDS" slogan on the reverse. Instead of stacking it with the rest,
I took it home. If the contract were rejected, I'd carry it again Tuesday
morning. If we ended up going back to work, I'd have a nice
souvenir.
Voting was scheduled for all day Sunday at the
Pavilion at Seattle Center. The Center is a combination park and cultural
center at the foot of the Space Needle ... like the Needle, most of the
buildings were erected for the 1961 Worlds Fair. Living in the suburbs for my
20 years in Seattle, I didn't really know which building was the Pavilion. I
was a bit concerned about finding it. My wife had a helpful suggestion: "Just
back-track the nerds."
Son-of-a-gun if it didn't work. The Center was
having an art festival that weekend, but there was an obvious current of
neatly-groomed middle-aged men flowing to and from one of the buildings. Sure
enough, I soon came across the SPEEA signs.
The apron in front of the building was crammed with
small groups in earnest discussion. Here and there, large "YES" or "NO" signs
were hoisted above the crowd, with more-animated conversation
below.
The building itself, though, wasn't busy. I checked
in, got my voting card, and dropped it in the canister. Took all of about two
minutes.
I met a couple of friends outside, and stayed to
chat. The crowd was good-natured; I didn't see any animosity between the pro-
and anti- groups.
The results were announced that evening: About a
70% acceptance. Significantly, only about 70% of the total membership voted,
so in reality, the contract was accepted by barely 50% of the eligible
voters.
Still, the contact passed. The strike was
over.
We'd walked out in a group at 9:00 a.m. on February
9, and we would return the same way. The plan was to meet outside the gate,
then walk in together at nine. I'm senior enough that I have a pass for
parking inside the plant. I figured I'd just park the car by my office, then
stroll out to meet my friends.
But when I got to the plant entry ... I couldn't do
it. The waiting engineers still looked like picketers, and I couldn't bring
myself to cross the "line." I parked in the main employee lot outside the
gate.
We had about fifteen minutes before going in, and
spent that time catching up. Most of us had been on different shifts, or
hadn't come in to picket at all. We joked about missing the burn barrels on
this cold Monday morning, and passed homemade cookies around.
Then it was time. We trooped through the entry
turnstiles. Machinists applauded and shook our hands as we fanned out inside
the building, heading to our particular offices.
Get an "Am I glad you're back!" comment from the secretary, stick my
nose in the boss's office and say, "Howdy," and back to the desk. The strike
was over.
The return was bittersweet, in several ways. First,
one of our best engineers had accepted an offer from another company. He'd
walked back in with us to pack up his desk. Reports indicate that the
engineering and technician workforce had the same attrition during the 40-day
strike as normally happens through an entire year.
The main awkwardness stemmed from the single
SPEEA-represented engineer in our group who hadn't joined the strike. We
didn't know why he hadn't walked, though we suspected it was due to financial
circumstances rather than anti-union sentiment since he had been a union
representative in the past. I saw no outright hostility; people tended to
ignore him, but as a recent addition to our group there hadn't been a whole
lot of association before. No one confronted him, no one referred to him as a
"scab."
Work relationships have remained professional;
however, I have overheard some resentment of some other people who hadn't
walked out.
The only real discomfort came from an engineer in
our group who hadn't walked out because he would have been fired. On long-term
loan from a non-Seattle Boeing facility, he wasn't a member of the SPEEA
bargaining group and thus wasn't protected under our collective-bargaining
agreement. Everyone understood his situation, everyone greeted him warmly upon
their return. But he joked a lot about "While I've been scabbing" and "Will
you still associate with a scab like me." People cringed every time he said
the word "scab." For those who had walked the picket lines for forty days, the
word had a serious connotation.
The most ironic event came about a week after our
return. The main issue that brought about the strike was Boeing's attempt to
force the engineers and technicians to pay part of their health insurance
costs. About a year ago, Boeing had implemented such a plan on the
non-represented employees ... the finance people, the planners, the
secretaries, etc.
And a week after the strike, Boeing announced that
the non-represented employees would no longer be charged for their health
insurance. Boeing claims that the SPEEA settlement had nothing to do with the
change. No one I work with believes that.
Unfortunately, this final incident highlights one factor from the
strike: People feel they just can't believe the company any more. There's
still a lot of anger out there — anger at company executives coupled with
deep mistrust of company motives. Many engineers still feel we shouldn't have
accepted the offer; they think the company was on the verge of total shutdown,
and we could have won a bonus equal to that received by the machinists. They
might be right. Boeing's new Teamster contract gives them the same $2,500
bonus as the engineers, and, like the machinists' contract, theirs isn't tied
to commercial-aircraft deliveries.
(The tie to deliveries is especially ironic when
you consider that thousands of Boeing engineers, including myself, work
government contracts. Our work has no effect on commercial aircraft
production, yet our bonuses are tied to it.)
The contract wasn't a treaty. It was merely the declaration of an
armistice. The strike took both sides by surprise, and the contract merely
stopped a war neither side was prepared for. The fundamental issues ... those
of perceived lack of respect and deep mistrust of company management ...
remain.
While the engineers won nearly everything they were
fighting for, it was a close thing. But we proved to ourselves that we could
hold our own against the company. We learned that, even without preparation,
we could survive months without a paycheck. We learned that by working
together, we could make a difference.
In union, indeed, there was strength.
But the company learned, too. Many of its problems
were caused by its disbelief that the engineers would actually walk. Now that
it's disabused of that notion, it will prepare itself the next time contact
negotiations come around.
The strike of 2000 was merely the curtain-raiser.
The newly-negotiated contract expires in December 2002. Unless some
fundamental changes come into play, I'm afraid we're likely to see a repeat.
Except this time, both sides will be prepared.
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