Adumbration

The recent news includes more stories about how Boeing's engineering union, SPEEA, is planning on conducting a strike if they can't get the company to agree to their contract terms. 

One of my co-workers asked what she said was a "quick question": whether I supported such a move.  The short answer is "no", but that response does not really do justice to the situation, which has to be taken in context of a long history of labor relations and how tax policy treats benefits other than wages.

Of course everyone wants "more", so that's not really the point.  I want "more" and all the other union members also want more than they currently receive in exchange for their work for the company.  The problem is in how what "more" turns out to mean in the contract, and much of that is reflected in non-wage benefits, primarily the pension and medical benefits, and these must be considered in the context of socio-economic consequences of 70 years of restrictions and subsidies to those non-wage forms of compensation.

So consider the pension aspect in terms removed from the net present value estimations of the union perspective on defined benefits versus the company offer for defined contributions a la 401k provisions in many other companies.  The union position on pensions essentially locks all employees in to the company for the long term, firstly because the vesting doesn't complete immediately, and secondly because the defined benefits are a function of the final few years salary.  This only serves to weaken the employee bargaining position, since the longer an employee is in the pension system the more costly it becomes to drop out.

In contrast, the defined contribution 401k system immediately vests and is in the complete control of the individual employee, who can then take those savings with them to another company at the drop of a hat.  And the union position is to completely forbid this sort of compensation.

Stranger still is how this argument applies only to people who haven't even been hired; everyone currently under the union control still submits to the pension scheme in the company proposal.  Of course the current union leadership have been with the company a long time, and so are themselves tied in to the pension scheme and don't want that to be upset for themselves.  The result seems to be that their parochial view of things is going to apply to all current and future employees, regardless of possibly divergent views on what might suit their interests.  Instead of arguing on the basis of net present value of the benefits package for all employees, the union is forcing us all into being further locked in to the company pension.