How scandals at Boeing helped bring about the current strike

Beleaguered aerospace company Boeing faced a new source of woe on Friday when more than 30,000 workers in the Pacific Northwest commenced a major strike.

The labor action began days after Boeing's troubled Starliner spacecraft returned to Earth without its crew due to mechanical issues, and months after a door plug blew out of the company's aircraft mid-flight, which itself happened five years after Boeing's 737 Max aircraft were first grounded worldwide following a pair of tragic crashes.

The company's difficulties helped set the stage for the strike, deepening frustration among workers while bolstering their leverage, experts told ABC News. Still, they added, the company could itself invoke the challenges in an effort to strengthen its position in the standoff, claiming that a prolonged work stoppage could further imperil the already weakened firm and ultimately hurt workers.

"Everybody on the planet understands Boeing has had some quality issues," Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at the Worker Institute at Cornell University, told ABC News.

"Workers should be concerned about the bottom line because if Boeing goes out of business, then they lose their jobs," Wheaton said. "But the problems are a byproduct of sacrificing quality by trying to make more planes with fewer people. Workers want decent pay and planes that are safe."

Boeing had reached a tentative agreement earlier this week with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the union representing 33,000 workers at Boeing plants in Washington State, Oregon and California.

However, 94.6% of union members voted Thursday night to reject the tentative agreement. IAM's members went on strike at midnight on Friday after 96% of them voted in favor of the action.

"The message was clear that the tentative agreement we reached with IAM leadership was not acceptable to the members," Boeing said in a statement following the strike vote. "We remain committed to resetting our relationship with our employees and the union, and we are ready to get back to the table to reach a new agreement."

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg acknowledged the company's missteps in a letter to union members before the strike vote was taken.

"For Boeing, it is no secret that our business is in a difficult period, in part due to our own mistakes in the past. Working together, 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," Ortberg said in the letter, which the company shared with ABC News.

Boeing declined to comment in response to an ABC News request after the strike began. A similar ABC News request to the IAM did not immediately receive a response.

The tentative agreement struck this week between Boeing and the IAM would have delivered a 25% raise over the contract's four-year duration, as well as worker gains on healthcare costs and retirement benefits. The union had sought a 40% pay increase over the life of the deal.

The agreement also included a commitment from Boeing to build its next commercial plane with union labor in Washington state.

Union members view themselves as being asked to make sacrifices that were made necessary by the company's mismanagement, Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, told ABC News.

On Jan. 5, a door plug blew out of the company's 737 Max 9 aircraft at around 15,000 feet in altitude during an Alaska Airlines flight, prompting a federal investigation. The renewed scrutiny arrived roughly five years after Boeing 737 Max aircraft were grounded worldwide following a pair of crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed a combined 346 people.

"Boeing's management approved the various shortcuts initially that led to the problems," Harteveldt said.

The high-profile mishaps for which company leadership is responsible afford workers leverage, garnering goodwill from the public and urgency from Boeing as it seeks a turnaround, experts said.

"Public sentiment could be more inclined to the workers' side because we all observed Boeing's horrific incidents in the last few years," Jungho Suh, a professor of management at George Washington University, told ABC News.

The Federal Aviation Administration mandated a production cap of 38 737 Max planes per month from Boeing earlier this year following the door plug incident. Boeing recently delayed until March 2025 a production increase that was scheduled to begin this month, according to a Bank of America Global Research analysis shared with ABC News.

Strikes undertaken by this group of unionized Boeing employees in the Pacific Northwest have historically lasted an average of 60 days, a Bank of America Global Research analysis found after examining seven strikes, the earliest in 1948.

"We see Boeing in a particularly weakened position," Bank of America said. "An elongated strike would likely exacerbate the existing challenges."

However, Boeing could invoke its corporate travails as a means of exerting pressure at the bargaining table, some experts said.

Boeing is carrying nearly $60 billion in debt, Stephanie Pope, Boeing Commercial Airplanes president and COO, noted in a letter to union members earlier this week. The company's share price has plummeted almost 40% since the outset of 2024. Kelly Ortberg took over as Boeing president and CEO last month as part of a turnaround effort, replacing previous CEO Dave Calhoun, who announced his retirement in March in the wake of the Alaska Airlines door plug incident.

"If there's a strike, Boeing becomes that much weaker," said Harteveldt, of Atmosphere Research Group. "If the strike lasts a long time, it could take Boeing a long time to recover. There's a risk that it will create more potential problems for workers."

Workers and management will make their respective cases at the bargaining table, said Cornell University's Wheaton.

"That's why they have negotiations," Wheaton said. "Both sides aren't going to get everything they want, but something they can live with."