The Pro-Palestine Student Movement Should Unite with the Historic Boeing Workers’ Strike
The Boeing strike is the biggest strike of 2024 so far. The student movement that rose up for Palestine should show solidarity with Boeing workers on strike and fight back against all Zionist bosses. The student walkout of a jobs fair featuring Boeing at Cornell University was an important example of this unity.
Maryam Alaniz September 21, 2024 LEFT VOICE
On September 18, students walked out of a job fair at Cornell University, one of the elite universities that organized an unprecedented student movement in solidarity with Palestine and that also experienced a strike last month. Their motive was to bring attention to the presence of Boeing at the job fair as Boeing is one of the world’s largest aerospace manufacturers and defense contractors aiding the genocide in Palestine. As part of the walkout, students also showed solidarity with the over 33,000 Boeing workers that are currently on strike for better pay and working conditions. They chanted: “We won’t work, we will fight; no more jobs for genocide!”
As we recently wrote on our pages, in addition to offering pitiful wages to their employees compared to the record profits of the company’s superiors, Boeing also plays a key role in supplying weapons to Israel – weapons that allow the state to continue its genocidal attack against Palestine. As the prospect of a regional war seems less and less out of the picture, Israel’s weapons have the potential to harm even more working and oppressed people in surrounding countries like Lebanon.
Therefore by producing weapons that are helping to carry out a genocide, Boeing benefits from the exploitation of workers here and the oppression of workers abroad. In that way, the struggle for Palestinian liberation is tied up to the struggle of Boeing workers against their bosses. The Boeing strike is the largest strike so far in 2024 and comes at a time where more and more workers and youth are showing a willingness to fight within the labor movement. We can see this in the wave of unionizations at workplaces like Amazon and Starbucks and the uptick in strike activity, especially in important sectors, as the UAW strike showed last year.
Even within universities a dynamic new labor movement has emerged and is taking up unionizations, strikes, and experiences with rank and file organizing. Most recently, Cornell workers went on strike to protest unlivable wages and treatment from the school, and many university workers showed solidarity with Palestine throughout the encampment movement. One of the most important actions was the strike organized by the workers throughout the University of California system – one of the largest university systems in the country – to defend students and faculty who rose up in support of Palestine against attacks from their administrators and the police. Through these actions, we see how the unity between the student and labor movement is especially key.
The strategic power of the working class to “shut it down” can be deployed not only to fight for better wages, but also to fight for our democratic rights and against the oppression of other members of our class around the world. Throughout history, labor has played a decisive role in our struggles, even previously in the Seattle region itself, where the current Boeing strike is being held.
In 1919, Seattle workers organized a general strike and rocked the world by organizing a soviet in the form of a General Strike Council which democratically controlled the entire city for several days.
In our current context, the student movement is facing its own struggle with the development of an offensive against the Pro-Palestine movement in the universities, where administrators are taking repressive measures to silence the voices who speak out against the ongoing genocide.
Therefore, it is more important than ever for sectors of the student movement and the labor movement to unite their struggles. We must fight back against common enemies, like the Zionist bosses at Boeing, who super exploit workers and perpetuate oppression against Palestinians. We must also confront the bureaucracies within universities and unions who do everything within their power to hold our struggles back. We can and should impose this unity “from below” and study historical examples like the example of the Seattle soviet and even the recent rank and file assembly at CUNY, to draw inspiration for how we can make our own decisions and move our struggles forward.
As the students at Cornell showed us, students can play a role in building this united struggle against our oppressors and exploiters. Clearly, the student and labor movement are stronger together; we have the power to create more unity and continue showing up for exploited and oppressed workers around the world.
Maryam Alaniz
Maryam Alaniz is a socialist journalist, activist, and PhD student living in NYC. She is an editor for the international section of Left Voice. Follow her on Twitter: @MaryamAlaniz
USA
Workers Strike Boeing, Stopping Production of the 737
In an angry, determined, yet festive action, with music blaring, airhorns blasting, and fireworks shooting into the sky, 33,000 Boeing workers walked out on strike at plants in Washington, Oregon, and California on September 13, stopping production of the Boeing 737 plane and other aircraft. The Boeing strike by the International Association of Machinists (IAM), the biggest strike of this year so far, is principally over wages and pensions.
Boeing offered workers a 25% wage increase, but 94.6% of workers voted to reject that contract and then 96% voted to strike. The union is demanding a 40% raise and restoration of the pension.
One Boeing worker, Adam Vogel, called the 25% raise “a load of crap. We haven’t had a raise in 16 years.”
Most workers start at a wage of $19 or $23 an hour, and in six years can reach the top wage of $43. The cost of living in Washington State where most Boeing plants are located is 17% higher than the national average and housing costs in Oregon and California are also high.
Striking workers carried hand-made signs that read, “Historic contract my ass” and "Have you seen the damn housing prices?" The song of the hour was, “We’re Not Going to Take It Anymore” by the Twisted Sisters.
Wages are not the only issue. Workers also want their pension plan restored. Ten years ago, Boeing, like most U.S. corporations, terminated the pension plan with a fixed payment and replaced it with a 401(k)-retirement plan based on investments, meaning pension payments can vary depending on investment returns
Boeing is one of the world’s two largest aircraft manufacturers, together with Europe’s Airbus, each selling about 5,500 planes each year. But for five years Airbus has been selling more planes and Boeing has had a series of disastrous problems over the last several years. Two of the company’s 737 Max airliners crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. In January of this year, a door blew out of a Boeing 737 Max. And most recently the Boeing Starliner space capsule could not be used to return two astronauts from space because its thrusters failed. Boeing has not earned a profit for six years.
While on strike — and this could be a long strike — workers will receive a $150 per week strike payment, which is not much. Some analysts predict the strike will last until mid-November. A 2008 strike at Boeing lasted for eight weeks and cost the company about $100 million per day.
Just before the strike, Boeing President Kelly Ortberg, sent a message to workers Wednesday urging them to accept the contract, “For Boeing, it is no secret that our business is in a difficult period, in part due to our own mistakes in the past, I know that we can get back on track, but a strike would put our shared recovery in jeopardy, further eroding trust with our customers and hurting our ability to determine our future together.” The IAM membership was unmoved and overwhelmingly rejected the contract.
Boeing, the IAM, and federal mediators have returned to negotiations.
The U.S. government has a big interest in the strike, economically, since Boeing is such a large and important business, but also for other reasons. Boeing produces fighters, bombers, and helicopters for the U.S. military and it works with the military to maintain aircrafts. And Boeing’s Defense, Space & Security (BDS) division produces satellites, spacecraft, rockets, and weapons.
To win this strike, the IAM is counting on the solidarity of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), which has 16,000 members working at Boeing in Washington who have pledge not to do striking machinists’ work. In the past Teamsters union truck drivers have refused to cross picket lines to make deliveries to Boeing. Boeing workers have plunged into the strike with enthusiasm and are determined to win.
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