Well, my mother’s house has been stripped bare. We hired a local contractor to sweep through and sort and dispose of everything she left behind, which leaves me feeling sad and depressed. She lived there for almost 50 years, and had gathered all these memories, neatly boxed and on display, of the family she loved, and I’ve ordered them all distributed to second-hand stores, Habitat for Humanity, and landfills. Sorry, Mom.
The house will be going on the market in a week or two. The asking price will be $435,000, which leaves me slightly stunned. Housing prices in the Pacific Northwest are out of sight, although it could be worse — the house could have been located in the Bay area.
Now I have to be concerned with selling it off to benefit all the heirs, all 9 of them. Complicating that is the fact that Boeing is on strike. This is a house that was owned by a Boeing family, with multiple Boeing siblings, and is located not far from a Boeing plant, so I feel like that’s the market it fits in. Unfortunately, Boeing machinists have rejected the latest offer.
Machinists on Wednesday rejected Boeing’s latest contract proposal, dashing hopes for an end to the nearly six-week walkout and further complicating the aerospace giant’s path to a more stable future.
The vote by members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers districts 751 and W24 came on the same day the company reported a loss of more than $6 billion for the quarter that ended in September.
Boeing had hoped the sweetened deal, which included a 35 percent pay increase, enhanced health and retirement benefits and a $7,000 signing bonus, would be enough to end the walkout by 33,000 machinists, but some observers say they may have underestimated the mistrust and lingering resentment that remains among rank-and-file workers, particularly those who have been through previous rounds of contract negotiations.
My interests in this matter are all aligned. I want the union members to win a glorious victory and triumph with an excellent increase in pay and benefits because they deserve it, and I know Mom and Dad would be cheering them on (heck, Dad would probably be bringing coffee and donuts to the picket line), and darn it, I have a house to sell.
Also, we should be building more houses.
I was hoping one of the workers’ demands would be to move headquarters back to Seattle where it belongs, and take management out of the hands of bean counter MBA fatheads and put engineers back in control, like they were back when Boeing was a respected company.
Wait, Boeing ‘sweetened’ their deal? I thought the last one that the union rejected was their ‘best and final offer’.
If I didn’t know better, I’d be concerned that the huge corporation wasn’t negotiating in good faith.
My favorite from the union negotiators has been the emphasis on how Boeing squandered money on billions in stock buy-backs over the last few years to enrich the executives and big stockholders, rather than passing some of that profit on to the workers who make it possible. These corporate yahoos are not negotiating in good faith on a lot of levels.
But don’t you know, trump said assembly line work could be done by children, assembling parts like lego from a box!
Also, we should be building more houses.
Nah. It’s theft, not a shortage.
We should be stopping investors buying up all the available housing for their portfolios and only making them available to AirBnB.