Union workers have moved closer to a strike at Boeing plants in St. Louis, St. Charles and Mascoutah.
Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers rejected Boeing’s latest contract proposal on Sunday, hours before their current contract expired at midnight.
Union representatives said they’ll observe a seven-day “cooling-off period” before potentially calling a strike. The IAM’s District 837 chapter includes more than 3,200 members, who voted “overwhelmingly” to reject the proposal, according to a union statement. The latest contract negotiations began in June.
Boeing leaders said in a statement that no further talks are scheduled and that the company would begin preparing for a strike. The union members voted to authorize a strike if negotiations failed last month.
“We’re disappointed our employees voted down the richest contract offer we’ve ever presented to IAM 837 which addressed all their stated priorities,” said Dan Gillian, Boeing general manager and senior St. Louis site executive, in the statement. A Boeing representative declined on Monday to make further comments.
The rejected proposal included a 20% wage increase over four years and more vacation time and sick leave, according to a Reuters report.
In March, Boeing won a lucrative defense contract estimated by observers to total approximately $20 billion to build F-47s, the latest generation of U.S. fighter jets.
The importance of the defense contract gives Boeing extra incentive to end a labor strike quickly or avoid it altogether, said Michael Duff, co-director of the Wefel Center for Employment Law at St. Louis University School of Law. He added that President Donald Trump could also intervene in a way that influences the negotiations and potentially challenges experts’ understanding of labor law.
“It seems unlikely to me that the president would simply be quiet in the face of a labor dispute like this. I think the president would exert as much pressure as it's currently thought he could, and then maybe try to exert more pressure than that,” Duff said. “Those are likely the types of the things weighing in the minds of the union leadership. They may be thinking, ‘We don't really want to poke this bear.’”
The F-47 fighter jets are set to be manufactured by Boeing’s defense branch, based in St. Louis at the site where $1.8 billion was invested in an expansion project next to Lambert International Airport. Companies that have recently invested in their manufacturing facilities are less likely to respond to a strike by moving the affected work to another location, Duff added.
St. Louis County approved $155 million in tax breaks in exchange for Boeing’s promise to create 500 high-paying jobs. The aerospace giant employs more than 16,000 people at locations in north St. Louis County and St. Charles County and St. Clair County in the Metro East.
Boeing announced layoffs of 692 employees who worked at plants in St. Louis, Hazelwood and St. Charles in October. The job cuts were due to take effect in January.
This story has been updated with comments from an expert on employment law.
