BOEING STRIKE

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by CominternSH

by CominternSH

75 Years ago ...

1948

BOEING STRIKEfrom April 22 to September 13.

Don't Let Boeing Workers Down !

Uphold the great fighting tradition of Boeing workers !

Background Info:

It is important to know that this strike occurred shortly after the passing of the fascist “Taft-Hartley act”.

The Strike:

In 1945 at the end of the Second World War Boeing announced the layoff of 25,000 of its workers, this left the remaining workers shaken especially because the union contract would be expiring in 1946. As contract negotiations progressed into 1947 the company took an increasingly harder line (no doubt bolstered by the Taft-Hartley act) this was the position of the Boeing company “the company wanted 10 percent of the bargaining unit to be exempt from seniority; it wanted blanket disqualification of women from open jobs if, in the Boeing Company's opinion, the job required a man; and it wanted the elimination of plant-wide seniority.” (Ross Rieder, HistoryLink.Org, 4/06/2000) negotiations rapidly broke down and a Strike was authorized from June to December 1947, though it seems that no strike actually occurred in this period. Negotiations restarted in June of 1948 and for about 90 days the union and Boeing negotiated intensively. On or around March 15th the union offered to submit the unresolved articles of the contract to legal arbitration however again the Company took a hard line and demanded “the right of veto in the choice of arbiters and demanded to submit the entire contract to arbitration.” By April 13th the Union set April 16th as the deadline for the choice of Arbiters but the company again refused to budge. At this point the yellow union leaders knew that the Union workers wanted to go on strike, however they were firmly opposed to this preferring instead to play games with the capitalists, one day before the strike was set to begin yellow union leader Cotton (no first name given) addressed the workers and “cautioned the members as to possible consequences of such strike action” and further “informing them that the advice of the Grand Lodge (the national union) was to stay on the job.” On April 22nd in spite of the yellow union leaders and the screeching of the capitalists the workers of Lodge 751 went on strike. The Capitalist then approached the thug and yellow union leader of the teamsters, Dave Beck, to break the strike. Mr. Beck formed a rival union (Lodge 451) to hire scabs and strikebreakers to break the strike of Lodge 751 This action in particular undermined the strength of Lodge 751 by the end of the strike about 1/3rd of the strength of Lodge 751 had defected to lodge 451 additionally the Taft-Hartley act made the strike almost impossible to union to legally win even under ideal conditions. By September 13th the strike had ended costing the company upwards of 2 million dollars (around $25 million today) Under pressure from unfulfilled military contracts the Boeing company reluctantly took back the striking workers to fulfill the military contracts.

The failure of the 1948 strike shows the need to build up the Red International of Labour Unions

You can't demonstrate solidarity with the boeing workers in service of rhetorical purposes as the yellow unions do. The truth matters whether you support the day-to-day fights and strikes in deeds or just in words.

One day, we comrades of RILU will have to be measured by acts of solidarity before the eyes of the workers.

Now more than ever we call on union workers to join our ranks, across the globe the fight of class against class is growing to a crescendo and the unions will play a massive role in the coming struggles. We call to all workers

COME TO US

Break the chains of capitalism and fascism and join with the Comintern SH and the RILU

Only the proletarian revolution on a world scale can ensure that never again should a worker have to go on strike to get food on the table.