More than two years ago, IAM District 751 president Jon Holden started laying the groundwork. He began exhorting his members—the mechanics and inspectors and line workers that make up the bulk of Boeing's workers—to earmark part of their salaries union strike fund to tide them through an extended period sans paychecks should they need it.
Now they do. On Thursday, September 12, the membership representing 33,000 machinists in the Puget Sound region voted overwhelmingly to reject a tentative, last-minute agreement reached between Boeing and the union leadership just four days earlier. Though District 751 president Jon Holden praised the proposed pact as "the best contract we've negotiated in our history," and recommended ratification, ninety-five percent of the rank in file who voted cast their ballots to strike, far more than the two-thirds majority required. The machinists last unleashed this weapon in 2008, emptying Boeing’s Seattle-area plants for 58 days and costing the company a reported $100 million a day.
