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, Seattle’s KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reported Tuesday.
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.
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• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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