How the Tea Party helped a military giant bully its workers

How the Tea Party helped a military giant bully its workers

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Boeing is the $100 billion aerospace giant whose business includes selling fighters, bombers and missiles to the government. As I’ve reported, through a series of prolonged strikes, employees at its Washington state factories have extracted a share of the bounty from that business, and secured a level of economic security largely unheard of in America’s fastest-growing post-crash sectors.

This year Boeing, in a move the Seattle Times noted could “rapidly compress” the company’s “exit from Washington state,” threatened to build its next big airplane line somewhere new – at great short-term cost to the company – if union members didn’t cough up massive concessions in exchange for a promise to keep it in state.

Local Machinists Union president Tom Wroblewski reportedly tore up Boeing’s pension-replacing contract extension proposal at a union meeting and called it a “piece of crap,” but ultimately “declined to give specific direction” in Wednesday’s vote and “publicly stressed that the deal would bring job security.” The members still voted no, prompting Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to tweet, “Tough news from [union local] @IAM751 tonight,” Boeing to announce it was “left with no choice but to open the process competitively and pursue all options for the [new] 777X,” and Wroblewski to declare that the union had “preserved something sacred by rejecting the Boeing proposal,” and voice his “hope” that “Boeing won’t discard our skills …”

So Boeing Machinists declined to hand over future pensions as a ransom for protecting future jobs. Still, somewhere, South Carolina Gov. and self-described “union-buster” Nikki Haley must be smiling.