More than 33,000 workers began a strike last Friday that has put the operation of one of the world's leading aircraft manufacturers, Boeing, in check.

For this reason, this week, the company's management announced the suspension of thousands of jobs in the United States to deal with the strike. The way the strategy will be executed is that the management team and other team members will have to take a week of mandatory vacation for the duration of the work stoppage.

The company has been recording revenue increases in a row: in 2023, it achieved sales of US$77,794 million, registering a growth of 17% compared to sales in 2022. But the margins tell another story.

In an article on the subject, the BBC reported that Boeing employs a lot of dissatisfaction among workers because wage increases have not covered the generalized increase in prices in recent years and because of the loss of benefits such as pensions in previous negotiations.

"Many of the strikers who the BBC spoke to on Wednesday cited the loss of their bonuses and pensions, as well as inflation and increased cost of living, as their reasons for joining the picket line," explained the agency.

The company had proposed a union agreement involving a 25% cumulative wage increase over the next four years of the labor agreement.

The New York Times reported that "the unions started the talks by asking for raises of 40 percent. Some workers who started from a lower base wage would have received bigger raises; for about 7,500 workers, pay would have increased 45 percent, while another 5,000 workers would have received raises of 53 percent."

Boeing's offers also included increasing the average annual salary of a machinist from US$76,000 to US$106,000 over four years and a US$3,000 ratification bonus for each union member, among other benefits.

Although the company has been registering an increase in sales, it is clear that margins are not playing in its favor. According to the 2023 accounting reports, the company posted a gross profit of only US$7,724 million and an operating loss of US$773 million. The net loss reached US$2,222 million. That was the same story in 2022, when the net loss reached US$4,935 million.

The situation for the company is not at all easy, as this will represent a hard blow to its results for this year. As of last June, the company had recorded a net loss of US$1,794 million.