As I’m sure many others locals did who are on the outside and will also be impacted in various ways, I went to bed last night hoping that the impending Boeing (symbol: BA) strike would work itself out between the two sides.

Boeing Co. was bracing for a possible strike at its commercial airplane operations after Machinists union leaders representing more than 18,000 workers called for rejection of a final contract offer as “insulting.”

This morning I woke up and see that 86% of Boeing workers voted to strike for the first time since 1995 when they walked off the job for some 69 days. In 2000 engineers went on a 40-day strike which cost the company about $2.6 billion and their stock dropped 32 percent.

Living in this area for some 15 years now, I’m not shocked or hugely surprised, but am still saddened by this news. We have clients and friends who are Boeing employees and a strike isn’t good for them or their families. It seems like the dream company to work for when times are right, the pay is good, the conditions right, but when this strike stuff comes up it’s the worst place in the area to work.

Although it isn’t scheduled to start until 12:00pm PDT (about 4 hours from the time I write this) it now appears certain that the strike is on. If some good news doesn’t come changing this in the next few hours, I sure hope this strike is over quickly and both sides find a way to make a long term agreement. Something that goes longer than 5-10 years, hopefully, before coming to a strike that will cost an estimated $60-70 million per day. If the company loses the employees will lose too; this stuff flows downhill. As I post this, the stock is already down 2.24%.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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