The 3,200 Boeing mechanics and workers who have been on strike at Missouri and Illinois locations since August will vote on a new settlement agreement on Friday.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers announced Wednesday a union negotiating committee had reached a tentative agreement with Boeing Defense.
“The five-year tentative agreement includes improvements to general wage increases and restores a signing bonus,” the union said in a prepared statement. “IAM union members will be provided with more information soon.”
Union workers walked out from their jobs at Boeing’s three facilities in St. Louis, St. Charles and Mascoutah, Ill., on Aug. 4 after members rejected a four-year labor agreement.
According to a union statement announcing the strike, its members “assemble and maintain advanced aircraft and weapons systems, including the F-15, F/A-18, and cutting-edge missile and defense technologies.”
One of the union’s biggest complaints was the pay progression to get to top-scale pay is much slower than other Boeing sites and other aerospace manufacturers. The union was looking to decrease the amount of time, which is called auto progression, in the new contract, Chad Stevenson, a plant chairman for the union at the St. Louis facility, said in August.
He said the original offer wouldn’t equally benefit the longtime workers who endured pay freezes when the company’s contracts were “lean” over the last several years.
“Our members took concessions to help this company and continued to produce the same amount and the same quality of work,” said Stevenson, who works as an assembly mechanic. “So really it was over eight years, top-scale wasn’t raised. And we’re ready for them to make a competitive, fair offer in these negotiations and take it back before membership and let them decide again.”
In reaction to the details of the new offer, Stevenson said Wednesday that he wants union members to make a “collective decision, and I hope that we have a good showing at the vote, and there’s a good representation of what our membership wants.”
Boeing posted some key points of the agreement on its website Wednesday.
“Thanks to guaranteed wage increases, increased auto progression, and new progression opportunities, our team could earn up to 45% more on average by the end of this contract,” the website states.
It also states that employees in progression represent 78% of the team and have the potential to see “their hourly wages grow even higher than 45% by leveraging the new pay enhancements.”
Last week, Boeing announced it would be hiring permanent replacement workers for the empty position.
“If a job has been permanently replaced, there may not be a role to return to immediately,” the website states. “If a role is not immediately available, they will be added to a recall list until a position for which they are qualified becomes available.”
However, some workers told St. Louis Public Radio that Boeing already struggled to hire skilled workers before the strike began.
IAM Union members at Boeing Defense will vote on the tentative agreement Friday morning at the St. Louis Music Park in Maryland Heights. If the contract is ratified, striking employees will be required to return to work on Monday at 11 p.m.
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