Boeing defense workers strike may last ‘weeks or even months’: memo

Boeing is meeting “customer needs,” while anticipating that the strike in its military facilities in the St. Louis area will last for “weeks or even months,” according to an internal memo that AFP was able to get on Thursday.

About 3,200 workers in the central US states of Illinois and Missouri, who are represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 837, went on strike on August 4.

Boeing’s St. Louis facility produces the MQ-25 unmanned aircraft, the T-7 Red Hawk Advanced Pilot Training System, and the F-15 and F-18 combat aircraft.

Originally owned by McDonnell Douglas, the facility was purchased by Boeing in 1997.

“In light of the union leadership’s actions over the past few weeks, this strike could continue for weeks or even months,” said Dan Gillian, a senior Boeing executive in St. Louis, in a memo to employees.

As a result, the company has decided to activate a second phase of its crisis management plan, Gillian said, including hiring more replacement workers and identifying more tasks that can be outsourced to third parties.

“I remain committed to finding a path forward that ends the strike,” Gillian said, noting that the striking workers had already lost an average of $18,000 in wages.

The walkout follows a far larger slowdown that involved some 33,000 workers in Boeing’s commercial aviation unit.

They stopped operations at factories in the Pacific Northwest for about seven weeks in 2024.

Over the past year, the US aircraft giant’s output has been hindered by the strike and many safety investigations by regulators.

After Bloomberg revealed on Thursday that deliveries of the business’s newest-generation 777X model have been delayed once more until 2027 instead of 2026, the company may be dealing with additional production issues.

German airline Lufthansa, which is scheduled to get the first of the twin-engine long-haul aircraft, has started making plans to remove the aircraft from its flying schedules until 2027, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the situation.

It did not provide reasons for the delay.