Seattle’s first Socialist council member is now on record with a “radical” option for union workers in their standoff with Boeing: take over the factories.
“The workers should take over the factories, and shut down Boeing’s profit-making machine,” council member-elect Kshama Sawant told an audience of Union Workers,
Boeing is seeking a contract with union workers that would result in work for eight years on the new 777X airliner — provided that new employees go without a guaranteed pension.
“The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say the machines are here, the workers are here, we will do the job, we don’t need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the machinists do,” Ms. Sawant said.
She referred to such takeovers as “democratic ownership.”
“We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses, instead of destructive, you know, war machines,” she told KIRO 7.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/...
This needs to happen. That factory was built and paid for with tax subsides, credits, exemptions, and Washington state labor, mind, body and soul.
Crowd-source it, crowd fund it, and make it a worker owned cooperative . Make it happen. It's the only way we have left to move forward!
council member-elect Kshama Sawant is BRAVE and Progressive thinking.
FORWARD.
Boeing is demanding 8 billion in concessions to stay in state, those tax dollars aren't free. That's less money for schools and roads and fire depts. Washington State is all too willing to grant those billions, but Boeing is still threatening to leave. How many concessions has the state already given Boeing over the last few decades? Probably billions upon billions, and if Boeing wants to leave now- so be it. But they should be made to pay back every single cent they received in incentives before they run away.
That plant is owned as much by the tax payers of that state as it does to the company itself. And lest not forget about the Washington state workers that made the company what it is- i'd say they own a piece of that company as well.