Boeing gives union more time to vote on an offer that's getting poor reviews from striking workers

SEATTLE (AP) — Boeing is giving the union representing striking factory workers more time to consider a revised contract offer with bigger pay increases and more bonus money, but it was unclear Tuesday whether the union would schedule a ratification vote on the proposal.

On picket lines in the Pacific Northwest, strikers said the company’s latest offer wasn't good enough. Both the union and many of its members complained about the way Boeing bypassed the union in publicizing the offer, with some workers saying it was an unfair attempt to make them look greedy.

Boeing's new “best and final” offer includes pay raises of 30% over four years, up from 25% in a deal that 33,000 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers overwhelmingly rejected when they voted to strike. The union originally demanded 40% over three years.

In the face of opposition from the union, Boeing backed down Tuesday from a demand that workers vote on the new offer by Friday night, but the company still wants a vote.

“This strike is affecting our team and our communities, and we believe our employees should have the opportunity to vote on our offer that makes significant improvements in wages and benefits,” the company said in a statement.

The new offer seemed to have little support among strikers. Daniel Dias, a test technician at Boeing for the last six years, wasn’t bowled over.

“A 5% increase (from the previous offer)? It’s not enough. My mortgage is $4,000. I went to Safeway yesterday to get breakfast, and it cost me $62" in groceries, Dias said.

Som Dom, an electrician with 17 years at Boeing's factory in Renton, Washington, said workers need better wages for the high cost of living in the Seattle area.

“We just want a fair deal. We’re not greedy," Dom said. “It’s tough to live in this state. You’ve got to make over $160,000, something like that, to buy a house. The new hires, they make $25, $26 an hour. So that (offer) isn’t going to be enough.”

Boeing officials told union representatives about their new offer Monday morning, a couple hours before announcing it to workers through the media.

“Boeing does not get to decide when or if you vote,” union officials told members late Monday. “This proposal does not go far enough to address your concerns, and Boeing has missed the mark with this proposal."

John Lentz, a Boeing electrician who joined co-workers in waving strike signs along a side road near the Renton factory, said the way Boeing bypassed union negotiators in announcing the offer “seems to be kind of shady there. We do have people that are in place to negotiate for us.”

Boeing said its latest offer includes upfront pay raises of 12% plus three annual raises of 6% each and would take the average annual pay for machinists from $75,608 now to $111,155 at the end of the four-year contract.

It also would keep annual bonuses based on productivity. In the rejected contract, Boeing sought to replace those payouts with new contributions to retirement accounts.

John Reifel, who has spent nearly 25 years at Boeing, said the company was trying to make the strikers look unreasonable when they are only seeking to negotiate a contract for the first time in more than a decade.

“We build a product that people’s lives depend on,” Reifel said. “There will be plenty of bonus money to go around for upper-level and mid-level and first-level managers and all that, but if we don’t build it, there’s no product. And we work hard.”

The two sides have not held formal negotiations in nearly a week, since two days of sessions led by federal mediators broke off.

Boeing, which has encountered serious financial, legal and mechanical challenges this year, is eager to end the 12-day-old walkout that has halted production of its best-selling airline planes.

Cai von Rumohr, an aviation analyst at financial services firm TD Cowen, said Boeing's decision to make its latest offer in the absence of additional bargaining sessions put a proposed second ratification vote in doubt.

“If it fails, it should prompt union leadership to reengage in serious negotiations," he said. However, union leadership's support for Boeing's previous offer — which lost in a 96% strike vote — raises questions about the union's ability to win support for the new, improved offer, he said.

The strike has shut down production of Boeing 737s, 767s and 777s and is causing the company to make cost-cutting moves, including rolling temporary furloughs for thousands of nonunion managers and employees.

Boeing has lost more than $25 billion since the start of 2019 and fallen far behind rival Airbus in orders and deliveries of planes to airline customers. It needs to deliver more planes to bring in cash, but federal regulators are limiting production of 737s — Boeing's best-selling plane — to 38 per month until the company improves its quality-control process. Boeing was producing fewer than 38 before the strike.

The downturn started after two deadly crashes involving Boeing 737 Max jets, and worsened after a panel called a door plug blew off another Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

Boeing’s critics, including some whistleblowers from inside the company, claim Boeing cut corners during production and put profits above safety.

The head of the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing’s regulator, said Tuesday that while it is not his job to assess Boeing’s finances, giving too little attention to safety has not turned out well for the company.

“Even if profits were your No. 1 goal, safety really needs to be your No. 1 goal because it’s hard to be profitable if you’re not safe, and I think Boeing certainly has learned that,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said during a U.S. House subcommittee hearing. “Whatever money might have been saved has certainly been lost in the fallout.”

Whitaker, who previously acknowledged his agency's oversight of Boeing wasn’t strong enough, told lawmakers that since Boeing submitted a plan to improve its manufacturing in late May, “They have been trending in the right direction.”

Still, he said, it will take years for Boeing to fully change its safety system and culture.

Koenig reported from Dallas.

Boeing workers arrive to work the picket line as they strike Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, outside the company's factory in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Accompanying their father, who works for Boeing, Kassie Odo 2, and Iya Odo, 4, hold small picket signs, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, as Boeing workers strike near the company's factory in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Messages written in chalk adorn the sidewalks outside of Boeing's Renton factory as employees continue to strike Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Boeing workers hold picket signs as they strike Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, outside the company's factory in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Signs are taped to a light pole as Boeing workers strike Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, outside the company's factory in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Boeing employee Som Dom, an electrician who has worked 17 years at Renton factory, holds a picket sign as workers strike Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, outside the company's factory in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

A Boeing worker waves a picket sign Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, as workers continue to strike outside the company's factory in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Boeing employee Som Dom, an electrician who has worked 17 years at Renton factory, holds a picket sign as workers strike Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, outside the company's factory in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Daniel Dias, a functional test technician who has worked for Boeing for six years, back center, stands near an entrance to the company's factory as workers hold picket signs while striking Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Boeing employees Cham Sin, in black, and Lou Saephanh, right center, wave signs as Boeing workers continue to strike Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, near the company's factory in Renton, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker testifies before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation hearing, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker testifies before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Aviation hearing, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Boeing workers boo a car turning into the Everett factory parking lot as they wave picket signs while striking after union members voted to reject a contract offer, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, near the company's factory in Everett, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Boeing workers wave picket signs as they strike after union members voted to reject a contract offer, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, near the company's factory in Everett, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Boeing gives union more time to vote on an offer that's getting poor reviews from striking workers

Boeing gives union more time to vote on an offer that's getting poor reviews from striking workers

BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man was executed Tuesday for breaking into a woman’s home and killing her, despite calls by her family and the prosecutor’s office that put him on death row to let him serve out the rest of his life in prison.

Marcellus Williams, 55, was convicted in the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, who was repeatedly stabbed during the burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.

Williams’ hopes of having his sentence commuted to life in prison suffered dual setbacks Monday when, almost simultaneously, Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied him clemency and the Missouri Supreme Court declined to grant him a stay of execution. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene Tuesday.

Williams was put to death despite questions his attorneys raised over jury selection at his trial and the handling of evidence in the case. His clemency petition focused heavily on how Gayle’s relatives wanted Williams’ sentence commuted to life without the possibility of parole.

“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the petition stated. “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”

Last month, Gayle’s relatives gave their blessings to an agreement between the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office and Williams’ attorneys to commute the sentence to life in prison. But acting on an appeal from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s Office, the state Supreme Court nullified the agreement.

Williams was among death row inmates in five states who were scheduled to be put to death in the span of a week — an unusually high number that defies a yearslong decline in the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S. The first was carried out Friday in South Carolina. Texas was also slated to execute a prisoner on Tuesday evening.

Gayle, 42, was a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. Prosecutors at Williams’trial said he broke into her home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard the shower running and found a large butcher knife. Gayle was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. His girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. She said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about it.

Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward. They said that fingerprints, a bloody shoeprint, hair and other evidence at the crime scene didn’t match Williams’.

A crime scene investigator had testified the killer wore gloves.

Tuesday marked the third time Williams had faced execution. He was less than a week away from lethal injection in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court called it off, allowing time for his attorneys to pursue additional DNA testing.

Williams was hours from being executed in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to examine the case. But that panel never reached a conclusion.

Questions about DNA evidence also led St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that DNA on the knife belonged to members of the prosecutor’s office who handled it without gloves after the original crime lab tests.

Without DNA evidence pointing to any alternative suspect, Midwest Innocence Project attorneys reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole. A no-contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for the purpose of sentencing.

Judge Bruce Hilton signed off, as did Gayle’s family. But Bailey appealed, and the state Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing, which took place last month.

Hilton ruled on Sept. 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand, noting that Williams’ arguments all had been previously rejected. That decision was upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.

Attorneys for Williams, who was Black, also challenged the fairness of his trial, particularly the fact that only one of the 12 jurors was Black. Tricia Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project said the prosecutor in the case, Keith Larner, removed six of seven Black prospective jurors.

Larner testified at the August hearing that he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams — a statement that Williams’ attorneys asserted showed improper racial bias.

Larner contended that the jury selection process was fair.

Williams was the third Missouri inmate put to death this year and the 100th since the state resumed use of the death penalty in 1989.

AP writer Mark Sherman contributed from Washington. Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.

FILE - This photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections shows Marcellus Williams. (Missouri Department of Corrections via AP, file)

Lawyers seek Supreme Court intervention hours before a Missouri inmate's planned execution

FILE - Joseph Amrine, who was exonerated two decades ago after spending years on death row, speaks at a rally to support Missouri death row inmates Marcellus Williams on Aug. 21, 2024, in Clayton, Mo. (AP Photo/Jim Salter, file)

Lawyers seek Supreme Court intervention hours before a Missouri inmate's planned execution