Tom McCarty

Picket Line Tom McCarty

On February 9, 2000, the largest white-collar strike in the private sector in U. S. labor history was called against the Boeing Company in Seattle, Washington. The engineers and technicians represented by the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) IFPTE Local 2001 walked away from good-paying jobs for forty days and forty nights. This book is a first-person account of the experiences of that strike. The strike was unprecedented in the union's history. The local media, Boeing management and the workers themselves had little confidence that this strike would last more than a few days. This narrative explores the motivation and the issues that compelled these workers to give up the security of a regular paycheck and face the uncertainty of a prolonged labor strike. This strike was unique in many ways, rarely have white collar professional workers taken such drastic action. This strike grew from the dissatisfaction with the lack of respect in management's treatment of engineering and technical employees. Tom is an Electrical Engineer who spent 41 years at the Boeing Company. Shortly after graduating from Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey, he accepted a job with the Boeing. Tom is a former President of SPEEA, the union which represents the Engineers, Technicians and Training Pilots in the Pacific Northwest.