You’ve got to hand it to Boeing. After only a month and a half of negotiations with its machinists union, it reached a deal that not only appeared fair to its workers, but also relieved the company of a potentially lengthy and costly litigation related to its effort to head off any further labor disruptions by building a new 787 plant in North Charleston, S.C.
The relatively quick and apparently smooth road to labor peace might lead one to wonder why Boeing historically had experienced such trouble reaching agreements with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) in the past. In fact, no fewer than four strikes since 1989 have cost Boeing billions of dollars in revenues and less tangible currency with customers. The latest—in the autumn of 2008—contributed to the delays of the 787 Dreamliner and, at least in part, prompted Boeing to build a new factory in a so-called right-to-work state to mitigate some of the risk of future strikes.
Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with New Jersey Monthly magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for Aviation International News in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.
