Boeing workers vote on new contract that could end strike
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(SEATTLE) — Tens of thousands of striking Boeing machinists are casting ballots on Monday over whether to approve a contract offer that could end their work stoppage after seven weeks.
The new offer delivers higher pay increases and a bolstered ratification bonus that would deliver each worker $12,000 if the union approves the deal, according to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the union representing 33,000 Boeing workers in Washington, Oregon and California.
The ongoing standoff has strained the finances of both sides. Union members have received $250 per week from a strike fund, beginning in the third week of the work stoppage. That compensation marks a major pay cut for many of the employees.
Boeing and its shareholders have lost about $5.5 billion since the strike began in September, according to an estimate last month from the Anderson Economic Group. Shares of Boeing have plummeted 40% this year but have ticked up slightly over the past month.
Union members resoundingly defeated two previous proposals from Boeing, but the latest offer marks the best deal the workforce is likely to receive, the union said in a public letter to membership on Saturday.
“This is truly the time to lock in these gains and work to build more in future negotiations,” IAM President Jon Holden and the union’s negotiating committee told members. “Allow yourself to capture this win and be proud of your sacrifice.”
The proposed contract would deliver a 38% raise over the four-year duration of the contract, upping the 35% cumulative raise provided in a previous offer overwhelmingly rejected by workers in a vote two weeks ago. Workers had initially sought a 40% cumulative pay increase.
The proposal also calls for hiking Boeing’s contribution to a 401(k) plan, but it declines to fulfill workers’ call for a reinstatement of the company’s defined pension. Workers lost a traditional pension plan in a contract ratified by the union in 2014.
Nearly two thirds of union members rejected the most recent contract offer in a vote last month. The outcome followed the overwhelming defeat of a previous proposal in September, which drew rebuke from more than 90% of union members.
“It’s time we all come back together and focus on rebuilding the business and delivering the world’s best airplanes,” Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg wrote in a memo to employees on Friday. “There are a lot of people depending on us.”
It will take a majority vote of union members to approve the contract offer. If workers ratify the deal, they can return to work as early as Wednesday, the union said.
“The decision to end this strike is right where it needs to be — in the membership’s hands,” Holden and the negotiating committee said in their public letter.
(NEW YORK) — Oil prices climbed more than 3% on Tuesday in the immediate aftermath of an Iranian missile attack on Israel.
The spike in prices is expected to push up the price of U.S. gasoline, experts told ABC News.
Drivers could face a price increase of between 10 and 15 cents per gallon, experts estimated. The national average price of a gallon of gas currently stands at $3.20, AAA data showed.
A further escalation of the conflict between Israel and Iran could send oil and gas prices significantly higher, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston.
“Clearly this will have a huge impact on gas prices,” Krishnamoorti told ABC News. “There’s no doubt about that.”
Iran said the attack on Tuesday was retaliation for a wave of assassinations carried out by Israel over the last several weeks targeting Hezbollah leaders. Israel will have a “significant response” to Iran’s attack, an Israeli official told ABC News.
While sanctions have constrained Iranian oil output in recent years, the nation asserts control over the passage of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, a trading route that facilitates the transport of about 15% of global oil supply.
Passage through the Suez Canal, another important shipping route for crude oil, could be impacted by further attacks, as happened with Yemen-based Houthi attacks on freight ships earlier in the war, Krishnamoorti said.
Despite a recent uptick, the price of oil stands well below a 2022 peak reached when the blazing-hot economic rebound from the pandemic collided with a supply shortage imposed by the Russia-Ukraine war. Gas prices, meanwhile, have plummeted in recent months.
The U.S. set a record for crude oil production in 2023, averaging 12.9 million barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a federal agency.
The surge in U.S. production would help limit the impact of a possible supply disruption, though oil prices are set on a global market, where a major supply shock could not be entirely accounted for with U.S. oil output, Timothy Fitzgerald, a professor of business economics at the University of Tennessee who studies the petroleum industry, told ABC News.
“This is less troubling than it would’ve been a generation ago,” Fitzgerald said. “Today, we export more crude oil than we import.”
If both sides deescalate, the price of crude oil could quickly drop back to where it stood before the Iranian attack on Tuesday, Fitzgerald added.
“There would be no lasting importance of that,” Fitzgerald said.
The rise in oil prices comes at a relatively quiet period in the U.S. gasoline market. Drivers have enjoyed a sharp decline in gasoline prices over recent months, in part due to sluggish demand for gas as the busy summer traveling season has given way to an autumn slowdown.
Still, a regional war in the Middle East could upend the market and spike prices, experts said.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina condemned Iran’s missile attack on Israel, calling it a “breaking point” on Tuesday and urging President Joe Biden’s administration to respond.
Graham called for oil refineries to be “hit and hit hard” and said his prayers are “with the people of Israel.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are monitoring the Iranian attack from the White House Situation Room. Biden directed the U.S. military to aid Israel’s defense against Iranian attacks and shoot down missiles.
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin and Jordana Miller contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — U.S. hiring surged in September, blowing past economist expectations and rebuking concern about weakness in the labor market. The fresh report marks one of the last major pieces of economic data before the presidential election.
Employers hired 254,000 workers last month, far exceeding economist expectations of 150,000 jobs added, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%.
Weaker-than-expected jobs data in both July and August has stoked worry among some economists about the nation’s economic outlook.
Despite an overall slowdown this year, the job market has proven resilient. Hiring has continued at a solid pace; meanwhile, the unemployment rate has climbed but remains near a 50-year low.
“The labor market is still healthy, but we have clearly seen a slowdown,” Roger Aliaga-Diaz, chief Americas economist at investment firm Vanguard, told ABC News in a statement before the new data was released. “Now we are approaching an inflection point.”
The new data arrived two weeks after the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate a half of a percentage point. The landmark decision dialed back a years-long fight against inflation and offered relief for borrowers saddled with high costs.
Inflation has slowed dramatically from a peak of about 9% in 2022, though it remains slightly higher than the Fed’s target of 2%.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C. last month, Fed Chair Jerome Powell described the rate decision as a shift in approach as the Fed focuses more on ensuring robust employment and less on lowering inflation.
“This recalibration of our policy stance will help maintain the strength of the economy and the labor market, and enable further progress on inflation,” Powell said.
In theory, lower interest rates help stimulate the economy and boost employment. However, the Fed’s interest rate decisions typically take several months before they influence economic activity. In any case, the soon-to-be released report tracks hiring for September, meaning the majority of the period reflected in the data took place before the rate cut.
Still, the jobs report on Friday held significant implications for further rate decisions over the coming months. The Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, a policymaking body at the Fed, has forecast additional interest rate cuts.
By the end of 2024, interest rates will fall another half of a percentage point from their current level of between 4.75% and 5%, according to FOMC projections. Interest rates will drop another percentage point over the course of 2025, the projections further indicated.
(NEW YORK) — Instagram this week unveiled mandatory accounts for teens that bolster privacy protections, enable parental supervision, and restrict notifications during overnight hours.
New and existing users under the age of 18 will be automatically enrolled in what Instagram is calling “Teen Accounts,” the company said.
The move comes 16 months after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in an advisory that excessive social media could pose a “profound risk” to the mental health of children. Instagram also has faced pressure from some federal and state lawmakers seeking to regulate social media use among children and teens.
Experts who spoke to ABC News differed about whether Meta’s new restrictions for teen users would effectively mitigate the risks that young Instagram users face.
Some experts applauded the guardrails as a meaningful, though insufficient, step toward preventing teen harm. Others said the absence of robust age verification account measures would allow young users to circumvent the rules, rendering the new settings largely pointless.
In response to an ABC News request for comment, Meta said the company is expanding its efforts to verify the age of teen users.
“We’re requiring teens to verify their age in new ways. For example, if they attempt to create a new account with an adult birthday, we will require them to verify their age in order to use the account,” Meta spokesperson Dani Lever told ABC News.
“We also want to do more to proactively find accounts belonging to teens, even if the account lists an adult birthday. We’re building technology to proactively find these teens and place them in the same protections offered by Teen Account settings,” Lever added.
One expert said the restrictions also risk going too far, potentially limiting the free expression of teens and subjecting them to the control of parents with whom they may disagree about fundamental aspects of their identity.
“We need to be conscientious about the content that platforms are showing kids and how that can shape offline attitudes and behaviors,” Jon-Patrick Allem, a professor of public health at Rutgers University, told ABC News.
Allem added that he is reserving judgment until the changes receive further examination.
The new Teen Accounts were announced by Instagram head Adam Mosseri in a live interview Tuesday on ABC News’ Good Morning America.
“They’re an automatic set of protections for teens that try to proactively address the top concerns that we’ve heard from parents about teens online,” Mosseri told GMA. “Things like who can contact them, what content they see and how much time they spend on their device … all without requiring any involvement from the parent.”
New teen users will automatically be enrolled in Teen Accounts, while existing teen users will see their accounts switch to the new model within 60 days, Mosseri said on GMA.
The new accounts will place users under 18 years old into a private account by default, the company said, while users under age 16 will require parental permission to switch over to a public account. Under the private account setting, teens will need to specifically accept new followers, and only those followers will be able to see their content and interact with them.
With the new accounts, teens also will have the power to choose the age-appropriate topics they want to see more of on Instagram, like sports or art, and parents will also be able to see the topics their teens choose, according to Instagram.
Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University and author of The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, offered lukewarm praise for the restrictions in a post on X on Tuesday.
“I am cautiously optimistic about Meta’s new teen accounts,” Haidt said. “Most of the problems with social media will still plague teens on Instagram. But this is a good start, and I hope it is just the first of many steps from Meta.”
Paul Barrett, a professor at New York University Law School and deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, acknowledged that some of the Instagram changes would alleviate harm endured by teens on the platform. However, he added that the move would likely have little impact in the absence of better age verification measures to ensure that teens enroll in the Teen Accounts.
“This points in the right direction,” Barrett told ABC News. But, he added: “None of this is very meaningful until the company does something about age and identity verification. All of the other requirements become ineffective if kids just pretend that they’re adults.”
At least one expert said the changes risk causing some harm by putting too many restrictions on teen Instagram users. For instance, a child’s parents may have different views about fundamental questions of identity, such as whether one should believe in god, Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who studies content moderation, told ABC News. The increased parental supervision in the new accounts could enable such parents to limit their child’s personal growth, he added.
“Parents might have norms about certain behavior for their children,” Goldman said. “This might take away self-expression and self-exploration.”
In general, some children would likely benefit from the changes, while others would suffer harm, he added.
“Groups of children have different needs,” Goldman said. “If it’s a one-size-fits-all solution, some children are likely to benefit and others are likely to be harmed,” though he added that Instagram has the right to make changes that it deems appropriate.
In response to such criticism, Meta said the company worked with relevant stakeholders to strike a balance between user experience and parental involvement.
“We consulted with parents, teens, and experts throughout the process of building Teen Accounts. With these changes, parents decide if teens under 16 can change the built-in settings,” said Lever, of Meta. “This allows teens to use social media to connect with friends, explore and discover, while giving parents peace of mind that their teens have the right protections in place.”
“If Instagram is adopting this because they think it’s the best for users, I support their freedom to set the policies and approach that is right for them,” Goldman said.
