THE BOEING CENTURY
H16 July 2016 Sound Publishing
Labor: The seatbelt sign has come on Recent decades have been turbulent ones for Boeing, unions By Dan Catchpole Herald Writer
O
rganized labor’s influence on Boeing runs back to the company’s earliest days. In 1917, the company changed job titles to make it harder for trade unions to organize its workers. When workers unionized in 1935, Boeing didn’t support the effort, but the company didn’t vigorously oppose it, either. Violent clashes between pro- and anti-labor groups were not uncommon at the time. Boeing generally had good labor relations for the next few decades. However, those relationships have deteriorated in more recent times, a decline exacerbated by workers’ and corporate executives’ feelings of increasing vulnerability to global economic forces. During that time, those executives have increasingly come to define the company’s success in terms of the size of shareholder dividends. Anti-unionism runs deep in the aerospace industry. Many of its early leaders were staunch labor opponents. A 50-day strike in 1935 prompted Reuben Fleet to move his company, Consolidated Aircraft, from Buffalo, New York, to sunny San Diego, which offered tax concessions, better conditions for flight tests, and, most important, a low rate of organized labor. That same year, a handful of Boeing workers voted to organize as part
JUSTIN BEST / HERALD FILE PHOTO
Engineer Tim Donahue (left) and about 100 other SPEEA members strike at Boeing’s Everett plant on Feb. 9, 2000.
of the International Association of Machinists. Organized labor was on the rise after decades of violent and bloody clashes. New federal law gave legal and political cover to unions, which were increasingly popular among workers feeling the gnawing anxiety and economic uncertainty brought by the Great Depression. Many employers used the threadbare job market to squeeze sweat out of workers, who had little choice but to comply: it was that or risk losing their jobs. With
workers feeling used by their bosses and finding no shelter in the job market, it is little wonder they flocked to organized labor during the 1930s. At the time, many Boeing workers left for better-paying jobs at shipyards. In the first issue of the District Lodge 751’s newspaper, the Aeromechanic, a worker reported, “So many of the boys have been leaving Boeing’s to go work at the Navy Yard for more money, that soon they’ll be able to build planes instead of ships in Bremerton.” Boeing and Lodge 751 rapidly
expanded during World War II. Black activists pushed the two to stop barring black workers. At the time, the IAM oath, which members repeated before every local meeting, included the pledge that “I will not recommend for membership in this union any other than members of the white race,” reported the Northwest Enterprise, a black newspaper in Seattle, in 1940. The union and Boeing blamed each other for racist hiring policies. Continued on next page
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