Vote to come in the next 3 to 5 days.

Here's some of the news so far:

From the Guardian:

Both sides had shown recent signs of wanting an end to the strike. Wall Street analysts estimated Boeing was losing $100 million in revenue for every day its plants were closed, while striking workers lost their usual healthcare benefits after one month on strike and were receiving a meager $150 per week strike pay from the union.

The union said that details of the accord would be withheld until they can be compiled and distributed to IAM members in all Boeing locations. (Reporting by Ilaina Jonas, Bill Rigby and Laura Myers; Editing by Bernard Orr and Mathew Veedon)

AP quoted IAM spokesman Frank Larkin:

Francis "Frank" Larkin, a spokesman for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Washington, D.C., told The Associated Press the deal was reached shortly before 9 p.m. EDT Monday, in the fifth day of talks at Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service headquarters in Washington and the 52nd day of the walkout.

And these are my favorite quotes from the AP piece, mostly because AP isn't being anti-union or anti-worker (for once), I mean they actually include a quote from a statement from Mark Blondin, IAM negotiator! For the life of me, I can't even imagine why AP would include it, they aren't exactly worker friendly, but whatever, I still like seeing it.

According to a statement issued by the union, the settlement "will provide job security for its members and limit the amount of work outside vendors can perform in the workplace."

IAM represents about 25,000 workers in and around Seattle, 1,500 in Gresham, Ore., and 750 in Wichita, Kan. Participants in the talks included IAM President Tom Buffenbarger and General Vice President Rich Michalski.

"I think we've addressed all the major concerns that our members have had," Buffenbarger said by telephone.

The union withheld additional details of the agreement pending distribution to the membership, but its statement said the pact was unanimously endorsed by IAM negotiators and will be submitted for a ratification vote in three to five days. A simple majority is required for approval.

"This tentative agreement is the result of hard work and great sacrifice by many people," the union's aerospace coordinator and chief negotiator, Mark Blondin, said in the statement, "but no one deserves more credit than the workers at Boeing, who conducted themselves with dignity and determination throughout this ordeal.

"On behalf of the entire negotiating committee, I want to say it has been our honor to serve as their representatives."

Oh, never mind, I know why AP put that in, because it's actually on the IAM site:

The tentative agreement has the unanimous endorsement of the IAM negotiating committee and will be presented to members for a ratification vote, which will take place in 3-5 days. A simple majority is required to ratify the tentative agreement.

“This tentative agreement is the result of hard work and great sacrifice by many people,” said IAM Aerospace Coordinator Mark Blondin. “But no one deserves more credit than the workers at Boeing, who conducted themselves with dignity and determination throughout this ordeal. On behalf of the entire negotiating committee, I want to say it has been our honor to serve as their representatives.”

AP didn't exactly have to work for the story, did they?

And one last piece, from United Press International:

Boeing issued a statement saying the deal provides annual pay raises and improved pension benefits, while allowing the company to retain "the flexibility necessary to manage its business, while making changes to the contract language to address the union's issues on job security, pay and benefits."

The company said it had dropped its insistence on healthcare changes that would have had employees pay more for their coverage.

Striking union machinists at the Boeing assembly plant in Everett, Wash., said the strike was about protecting their jobs from outsourcing, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

In addition to the IAM and Boeing tentative agreement, the UPI piece further noted a little bit about SPEEA:

Boeing's white-collar union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, agreed Monday to postpone the opening session of its contract talks, The Seattle Times said. The talks, scheduled to begin Tuesday, will begin Wednesday instead.

Hope SPEEA has successful negotiations and I eagerly await the details from IAM on the contract specifics, but it was nice to see that Boeing put out just a few of the specifics themselves in terms of health care costs and outsourcing.

For up to the minute news, check out the IAM local 751 site. They've also posted a short contract synopsis and here's just a little teaser on the job security stuff:

Letter of Understanding #2 – Updated Letter of Understanding to protect nearly 2,200 facilities/maintenance employees currently on the payroll for life of the Agreement.

Revisions to Article 21.7 - Expanded the scope of our subcontracting review. Secured the ability to compete for work that moves from one Boeing facility to another Boeing facility.

Improved Letter of Understanding #37 with the following protections.
• Forklift Drivers, MPRF’s, Factory Consumables Handlers, Environmental Control Workers and Shipping/Distribution will not be laid off or removed from their job classification and grade as a result of Materials Delivery and Inventory Process. This revision expanded protection to 2,920 jobs for the life of the Agreement.
• Except for 787 final assembly, vendors are limited to delivering products to designated areas only. From there, bargaining unit employees will track use, disbursement, acquisition, and/or inventory of parts, materials, tools, kits and other goods or products.
• Jointly work with the Company to improve material delivery process and ensure our members grow with the new technology and innovations.
• Parties will explore options for retraining or reassigning bargaining unit employees to equal level jobs when employees are impacted by process and technology changes.

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Boeing seems determined to sink itself:

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Main table negotiations for new, three-year, contracts covering 20,300 engineers and technical workers at The Boeing Company start Tuesday (Oct. 28), in SeaTac.

Negotiations between the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), IFPTE Local 2001, and Boeing start after eight months of disappointing preliminary talks. The first meaningful discussion only recently took place, according to SPEEA Executive Director Ray Goforth. Union leaders started advising members in May to save money for a possible strike.

“Early indications are that these will be very difficult negotiations,” Goforth said. “Engineers and technical workers are the life’s blood of Boeing, but the current regime at corporate headquarters treats them as mere vendors selling a service to Chicago. This disrespect has to end.”

Talks involve two contracts. The first covers 13,390 engineers and a second contract for 6,889 technical workers. While the majority of workers work in the Puget Sound region, the contracts cover some employees in Oregon, Utah and California. Both contracts expire Dec. 1.

Negotiations for 700 engineers at Boeing Wichita start Nov. 13. The Wichita contract expires Dec. 5.

Boeing remains determined to change SPEEA contracts in several areas. Among the changes are fragmenting the union into small pieces, eliminating the defined benefit pension for new employees, shifting healthcare costs onto employees and accelerating the outsourcing of engineering and design work to suppliers, contractors and overseas companies.

Based on Boeing’s own data, many SPEEA-represented employees need significant pay increases to reach average wages in the aerospace industry. Union officials said for Boeing to remain a market-leading company, it must pay industry leading wages. Other contract improvements proposed by SPEEA include a meaningful cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA), increasing vacation to industry standards, bereavement pay when a close relative dies and for Boeing to follow Airbus North America and honor Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday.

“Everybody wins if we get a good contract,” said Dave Patzwald, chair of the Professional Negotiating Team. “We’re hopeful. We’ll know soon.”

Boeing remains an island of success in the economy with $7.5 billion in cash reserves. On Wednesday (Oct. 22), the commercial airplanes division announced third quarter profits of $694 million. Profits on the defense side were $845 million, up 4% from the same quarter last year. Total order backlog is $349 billion.

I've said this before and I'm gonna say it again, INDIVIDUAL CONTRACTS WEAKEN THE BARGAINING POSITION OF WORKERS. Boeing is interested in "fragmenting the union into small pieces" because doing so means that SPEEA is in line with the crap the UAW has carved out over the past few years. How'd that work for GM, Chrysler, Ford and the UAW in the end? Not well for any of them.

Need more on what's going on for IAM right now, head over to the IAM site for more. They are keeping the site updated at least daily.

Strike Update - October 26, 2008

Contract talks continued late into the evening Sunday and will resume first thing Monday morning. No details will be released until this latest round of contract talks have concluded.

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Got another response from WTU, AFT local 6 that I wanted to share. PS, this time, it's in the comments section, but it deserves front page billing:

Hi. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Candi Peterson. I am a WTU Board of Trustee member. I am also a WTU Building Representative for city-wide teachers and related service providers. I certainly invite DC teachers who are WTU members to take part in our union. As an elected leader, I welcome WTU union members to write me at my email @ saveourcounselors@gmail.com I will gladly forward your concerns and comments to members of our WTU Executive Board. Our WTU Executive Board meets twice monthly and WTU members are welcome to attend our meetings on the 2nd Saturday @ 9:00 am and on the 4th Thursdays @ 5:30 pm. Just notify Mr. Parker via email if you plan to attend and bring your union card.

Once school resumes, members should get in contact with their WTU Building Representatives which is an elected position within their schools. All Building Representatives post information about our monthly meetings as well as information about WTU events and updates on their WTU bulletin boards located in each school.

It is critical for all union members to stay in touch with their BR's and to first attend their own union meetings within their schools. WTU union members can also attend our monthly meetings which will be announced when we return. Feel free to listen for weekly robo calls and information sent out to your email address by the WTU. If WTU doesn't have your personal contact information, take the steps to make sure that they do.

Again, as a WTU Board of Trustee member, and Building Representative- feel free to email me and I have no problem ensuring that your concerns also get to our elected WTU Excutive Board members. Please feel free to check out my website to save DC school counselor positions in all DC elementary schools @ http://www.saveourcounselors.org

Thanks and welcome Aboard.
Candi Peterson
WTU Board of Trustees/Building Representative

Yeah WTU for stepping up to the plate!! Communication is a two way street, hope a few more travel down the street the way WTU is right now.

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More specifically, President of WTU, George Parker:

Thanks for forwarding this concern. Please have the teacher email me directly at gparker@wtulocal6.org. I will be happy to answer his questions and invite him to get involved.

George Parker

Okay, Peter Poer, balls in your court now. You'll have to tell us how it goes.

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Negotiating as a group isn’t easy. As individuals we often can want things that are in our own bet interest but not necessarily in the interest of the entire union. Case in point are the current negotiations underway with the Washington Teacher’s Union (an AFT member union) and Michelle Rhee.

Rhee is offering some interesting proposals. Currently, teachers are “tenured” after 2 years of service. Tenure means specific grievance rights, priority in new assignments (transferring or staying in specific schools), new assignments or sometimes after school programs (this depends on the school district and I’m not positive this is part of DC’s tenuring), etc..: Basically, what we’re talking about here is that you can’t just be fired if you don’t get along with the principal or if the kids in your class have behavior issues, don’t show up or fail (and there are combinations of these factors). So, here’s what is being reported in the Post about Rhee’s offer:

Under the "red" option offered by Rhee, teachers could retain tenure rights in exchange for a 28 percent raise over five years.

Under the "green" option, the annual salary and bonuses for a teacher with five years of experience could go from $46,500 to as much as $101,000 by 2010. Pay for a teacher with 10 years of service could jump from $56,200 to as much as $122,500.

Okay, that doesn’t really seem all that bad. It’s an interesting approach, however the Post goes on to note this:

But in exchange for a pay schedule that would make D.C. teachers among the best-paid public school instructors in the country, they would have to spend a year on probation, exposing them to the possibility of being fired.

Probation. What she’s looking to do here is removed teachers who are not performing but what does that mean?

- Does it mean that the kids aren’t coming to class?
- That they’re in the school but not in class?
- Does this mean that kids are not meeting their “yearly progress” for No Child Left Behind?
- Does it mean that the teacher who has 30 kids who have good study habits is competing with teachers who have 18 kids with terrible habits? How will kids be assigned to these classes?
-Will they be putting high performing kids in one class while sticking the “under performing” teacher with the under performing students?
-Will classes be co-mingled with excellent students and poor students?

I suppose I have a lot of questions, huh?

I think this really is the crux of the problem, there is no formula.

As a teacher, you don’t have the ability to cherry pick your students. After years of service, in other districts, kids are often tracked to have high performing kids singled out and teachers with more tenure are able to request those classes. If you do not get on with the principal at your school, you may also be saddled with students who come from difficult backgrounds where education is not cared about and where school is treated like a kids dumping ground.

I’m talking from experience here. Not as a teacher but as a parent of a child that grew up in DC public, Cleveland public and Richfield public schools.

I’ve had the very great experience of being a part of my kid's education. A partner with the teachers and administrators in the Cleveland and Minnesota schools, but in DCPS, it felt as if the teachers didn’t get the support they needed, the administrators didn’t get the resources they needed and where children roamed the halls all day, disrespecting the teachers, staff and administrators not to mention all the parents that happened by the school.

Cleveland is an urban district that happened to be in State receivership the year my daughter attended. There were 35 kindergarteners in my daughter’s class. When she went to Green Elementary, she was 1 of 18 students in her 2nd grade class. And yet, her kindergarten class had parent volunteers and an assistant teacher. For a winter program during the day, we filled the auditorium despite the broken seats. At Green in DC, for open house and conference days, I was usually 1 of 2 parents to show up despite night time events as well as day time.

In Minnesota, every parent showed up to the open house and we were reminded that there were a lot of volunteers signed up to be room parents and that maybe we should think of another way to participate in school, they simply had too many to accommodate all of us.

At Green, my daughter was spit on, threatened, kicked, pushed, pulled, hair pulled and all around bullied. She’d tell the teachers and playground monitors, but there were so many of these instances that her best solution was to simply stay near the teachers. She began volunteering for lunch duty so that she wouldn’t have to go outside.

I was forced to pull my child from DCPS and send her over to a charter school when her principal was beaten by 2 fourth graders. They broke an arm and at least one rib of this man in his 50’s. Even when she went back to DCPS for 8th grade (our charter school had no science education and the DCPS school did), I had to fight tooth and nail to get her into Algebra and advanced English courses. At Jefferson, they told me that they didn’t divide kids based on their abilities, however, she was in a class of kids who taunted her, where several had criminal records and would walk out on class in the middle of a lecture. Her history teacher and science teacher strongly suggested that I get her into a different class grouping because she needed to be with better students who were advanced. I was able to only get one of the classes changed, English, and I made arrangements with the teachers to allow her to come in for lunch time tutoring to keep her on grade level.

All of the issues that I’ve experienced at DCPS haven’t been issues related to teaching. Every one of the teachers my daughter had were good, dedicated people. What I ran into were parents who treated the school system like a babysitter, playground or dumping ground. Parents who didn’t come to the school except to register the kids. Until Rhee can come up with a plan to re-invest parents in their kids, I’m not sure how you’re going to be able to make a difference in the lives of these kids. As if stands now, tenure seems like the only thing available to make it worth being a teacher at DCPS and giving it up, just doesn’t seem to be worth the overall cost of losing it.

"The tenure issue is what provides due process, and that's what makes it so important to our members," Parker said.

On this point, I totally agree with Parker.

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Today, Reuters is reporting that AAM has rejected the new offer and is again saying that without huge concessions, US factories will close.

DETROIT, April 10 (Reuters) - American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc (AXL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Thursday a contract proposal from the United Auto Workers was a slight improvement, but still not market competitive and talks aimed at ending the union's six-week strike at the company's U.S. plants would continue.
>snip<

The parts supplier said it offered buyouts for UAW workers who would prefer to leave American Axle, or buydowns for hourly workers to accept lower wages and benefits, and again said it would have to close the U.S. plants if the union did not accept steep concessions.

Sure still looks as if Dauch is more in line with declaring Bankruptcy and moving all operations to Mexico than negotiating in good faith. It's too bad Dauch can't see the asset he has most at his disposal, his employees. He seems to really only see them as disposable. That is really sad.

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