From automakers to airlines: Boeing strike highlights growing labour discontent over pay & working conditions

Aircraft assembly workers walked off the job at Boeing factories near Seattle and elsewhere early Friday after union members voted overwhelmingly to go on strike.

Boeing has become the latest company to engage in labour negotiations with its unionised workforce, with contentious issues such as compensation and benefits, including healthcare taking center stage.

The latest development is part of a broader trend of companies navigating complex discussions with their union representatives. Here’s an overview of recent negotiations between various companies and their unions.

Late last year the United Auto Workers union overwhelmingly ratified new contracts with Ford and Stellantis, along with a similar deal with General Motors, that would raise pay across the industry and force automakers to absorb higher costs.

More from World

Nepal's new PM pays homage to people died during the Gen Z protest in her first national address This Week in Explainers: How recovering from Gen-Z protests is a Himalayan task for Nepal

The agreements, which run through April 2028, ended contentious talks that began in the summer of 2022 and led to six-week-long strikes at all three automakers.

The new contract agreements were widely seen as a victory for the UAW. The companies agreed to dramatically raise pay for top-scale assembly plant workers, with increases and cost-of-living adjustments that would translate into 33% wage gains.

Top assembly plant workers were to receive immediate 11% raises and would earn roughly $42 an hour when the contracts expire in April of 2028.

Under the agreements, the automakers also ended many of the multiple tiers of wages they had used to pay different workers. They also agreed in principle to bring new electric-vehicle battery plants into the national union contract.

Impact Shorts

More Shorts

‘The cries of this widow will echo’: In first public remarks, Erika Kirk warns Charlie’s killers they’ve ‘unleashed a fire’

Trump urges Nato to back sanctions on Russia, calls for 50–100% tariffs on China

UPS workers that are members of the Teamsters union approved a tentative contract with the package delivery company last year. The run up to the approval was not smooth though, with contentious labor negotiations that threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of businesses and households nationwide.

After negotiations broke down in early July 2023, Atlanta-based UPS reached a tentative contract agreement with the Teamsters just days before an Aug. 1 deadline.

At the time the tentative agreement was struck, full- and part-time union workers were set to get $2.75 more per hour in 2023, and $7.50 more in total by the end of the five-year contract. Starting hourly pay for part-time employees also got bumped up to $21, but some workers said that fell short of their expectations.

UPS said at the time that by the end of the new contract, the average UPS full-time driver would make about $170,000 annually in pay and benefits. It was not clear how much of that figure benefits accounted for.

As part of the deal, the delivery company also agreed to make Martin Luther King Jr. Day a full holiday, end forced overtime on drivers’ days off and stop using driver-facing cameras in cabs, among a host of other issues. It eliminated a two-tier wage system for drivers and tentative deals on safety issues were also reached, including equipping more trucks with air conditioning.

Earlier this month video game performers reached agreements with 80 individual games that have signed interim or tiered budget agreements with the performers’ union and accepted the artificial intelligence provisions they have been seeking.

The performers had been striking for over a month.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists began striking in July after negotiations with game industry giants that began more than a year and a half ago came to a halt over AI protections.

The interim agreement secures wage improvements, protections around “exploitative uses” of artificial intelligence and safety precautions that account for the strain of physical performances, as well as vocal stress. The tiered budget agreement aims to make working with union talent more feasible for independent game developers or smaller-budget projects while also providing performers the protections under the interim agreement.

Last month thousands of hospitality union workers on the Las Vegas Strip reached a tentative deal with the Venetian and Palazzo resorts, a first for employees at the sprawling Italian-inspired complex that opened 25 years ago.

The Culinary Workers Union announced on the social platform X that the deal came together after a year of negotiations. It covers over 4,000 hotel and casino workers, from housekeepers and cocktail servers to bartenders and porters.

Bethany Khan, a union spokesperson, said the deal mirrors the major wins secured in recent contracts awarded to 40,000 hospitality workers at 18 Strip properties owned or operated by casino giants MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Wynn Resorts.

Those wins included a 32% pay increase over five years, housekeeping workload reductions and improved job security amid advancements in technology and artificial intelligence.

The bump in pay under those contracts will amount to an average $35 hourly wage by the end of the contracts, according to the union. Workers at these properties were making about $26 hourly with benefits before winning their latest contracts in November.

Unions representing 85,000 health care workers reached a tentative agreement with industry giant Kaiser Permanente in October 2023 following a strike over wages and staffing levels.

The deal included setting minimum hourly wages at $25 in California, where most of Kaiser’s facilities are located, and $23 in other states. Workers would also see a 21% wage increase over four years.

The lead up to the tentative agreement included a three-day strike involving 75,000 workers in multiple states.

The tentative agreement also included protective terms around subcontracting and outsourcing, as well as initiatives to invest in the current workforce and address a staffing crisis.

Hollywood’s actors voted to ratify a deal with studios in December 2023 that ended their strike after nearly four months, bringing an official finish to a labor strife that shook the entertainment industry for most of last year.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists approved a three-year contract.

Control over the use of artificial intelligence was the most hard-fought issue in the long, methodical negotiations. The contract called for a 7% general pay increase with further hikes coming in the second and third years of the deal.

The agreement also included a hard-won provision that temporarily derailed talks: the creation of a fund to pay performers for future viewings of their work on streaming services, in addition to traditional residuals paid for the showing of movies or series.