Boeing made a “best and final” pay offer to thousands of striking workers on Monday, but its largest union declined to put it to a vote, saying the plane maker had refused to bargain and that the proposal fell short of members' demands.
The US company offered to reinstate a performance bonus, improve retirement benefits and double a ratification bonus to $6,000 if the workers accept the offer by Friday, according to a letter it sent to International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers officials.
Boeing is under intensifying pressure to end the strike that could cost it several billion dollars, fraying the company's already strained finances and threatening a downgrade of its credit rating.
But IAM District 751 said it would not hold a new vote on the offer, which is contingent on being approved by Friday and was not negotiated with the union.
“Logistically, we don't have the ability to set up a vote for 33,000 people in a few days like that anyway. Plus, it missed the mark on many of the things our members said were important to them,” said Jon Holden, president of IAM District 751, who is the lead negotiator on the Boeing contract.
He added that the union was to have surveyed members on Monday evening to get their views on the latest Boeing proposal.
“We are not obligated to vote on their offer,” Mr Holden said in an interview with Reuters. “We may, down the road. But our hope is that we can get into some discussion so we can actually address the need of our members.”
He said the Boeing proposal did not fully address priorities around retirement, wages and other issues.
Boeing said its latest offer, which came after unsuccessful federal mediation last week, made significant improvements and addressed feedback from the union and employees.
“We first presented the offer to the union and then transparently shared the details with employees,” the company said.
More than 32,000 Boeing workers in Portland and Seattle walked off the job on September 13 in the union's first strike since 2008. The workers, who have sought 40 per cent higher pay and the restoration of a performance bonus, rejected a previous offer by the company.
The union represents the workers who build Boeing's bestselling 737 Max and other jets.
Boeing's commercial planes chief Stephanie Pope had told workers before the strike that the company had held nothing back and that its offer at that time was the best deal they would get.
“Employees knew Boeing executives could do better, and this shows the workers were right all along,” IAM president Brian Bryant said in a statement.
The strike is the latest event in a tumultuous year for the company that began with a January incident in which a door panel detached from a new 737 Max jet in mid-air.
An earlier tentative deal between Boeing and the union that offered a 25 per cent raise over four years and a commitment that a new plane would be manufactured in the Seattle area if launched during the four-year agreement was voted down by more than 90 per cent of workers this month.
Boeing has frozen hiring and started furloughs for thousands of US employees to reduce costs amid the strike. Boeing has planned for workers to take one week of furlough every four weeks on a rolling basis for the duration of the strike.
The extensive furloughs show that new chief executive Kelly Ortberg is preparing Boeing to weather a prolonged strike that may not be easily resolved given the anger among rank-and-file workers.
North American unions have capitalised on tight labour markets to win hefty contracts at the bargaining table, with mainline pilots, car workers and others scoring big raises last year.
The IAM said 5,000 of its members in Wichita, Kansas, went on strike against Cessna business jet maker Textron starting on Monday.
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ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Mamo Year it started: 2019 Founders: Imad Gharazeddine, Asim Janjua Based: Dubai, UAE Number of employees: 28 Sector: Financial services Investment: $9.5m Funding stage: Pre-Series A Investors: Global Ventures, GFC, 4DX Ventures, AlRajhi Partners, Olive Tree Capital, and prominent Silicon Valley investors. UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Visa changes give families fresh hope
Foreign workers can sponsor family members based solely on their income
Male residents employed in the UAE can sponsor immediate family members, such as wife and children, subject to conditions that include a minimum salary of Dh 4,000 or Dh 3,000 plus accommodation.
Attested original marriage certificate, birth certificate of the child, ejari or rental contract, labour contract, salary certificate must be submitted to the government authorised typing centre to complete the sponsorship process
In Abu Dhabi, a woman can sponsor her husband and children if she holds a residence permit stating she is an engineer, teacher, doctor, nurse or any profession related to the medical sector and her monthly salary is at least Dh 10,000 or Dh 8,000 plus accommodation.
In Dubai, if a woman is not employed in the above categories she can get approval to sponsor her family if her monthly salary is more than Dh 10,000 and with a special permission from the Department of Naturalization and Residency Dubai.
To sponsor parents, a worker should earn Dh20,000 or Dh19,000 a month, plus a two-bedroom accommodation
HOW TO WATCH
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more from Janine di Giovanni
Know your cyber adversaries
Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.
Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.
Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.
Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.
Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
