According to union officials on Tuesday, Boeing Defense (BA.N) has placed contract talks with the striking machinists union on hold and has no intention of resuming until at least after the Labor Day holiday. For the first time since the strike started on August 4, negotiations between the two had only recently restarted the previous day.
After turning down Boeing Defense’s offer of a four-year contract, over 3,200 members of District 837 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) went on strike at the company’s sites in the St. Louis area. They put together the T-7 trainer plane, Boeing’s F-15 and F/A-18 fighters, armaments, and wing pieces for the company’s commercial 777X jet.
According to Boeing Defense spokesperson Didi VanNierop, the business has so far been able to continue production, flight testing, and other tasks utilizing non-union staff.
“Our offer was strong then and is strong now with an average of 40% wage growth,” said Dan Gillian, the top executive at Boeing in St. Louis, last week, in defense of the offer that was turned down by IAM District 837 members.
In July, Kelly Ortberg, the CEO of Boeing, told Wall Street analysts that a St. Louis workers’ strike would have a far smaller impact on the company than the one that occurred last November when 33,000 machinists at Boeing’s commercial plane division went on strike for seven weeks.
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