(Reuters) – Boeing Co raised its wage proposal for thousands of striking workers on Monday, offering a 30 percent overall pay increase over four years in what it called its “best and final” offer as the strike continues.
The U.S. aircraft maker also offered to reinstate a performance bonus, improve retirement benefits and double the certification bonus to $6,000 if workers agree by Friday.
Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA) workers in the Seattle area who build the company’s best-selling 737 Max and other planes assembled at its factories in Washington state went on strike on Sept. 13, after rejecting their first full contract in 16 years.
Boeing has frozen hiring and begun laying off thousands of employees in the United States in a bid to cut costs. A prolonged strike could cost billions of dollars, eroding the planemaker’s already strained finances and threatening to downgrade its credit rating.
The strike, Boeing’s first since 2008, is the latest event in a turbulent year for the company that began with an incident in January when a door panel detached from a new 737 Max jet in mid-air.
Factory workers rejected an earlier tentative agreement between Boeing and unions that offered a 25 percent raise over four years and a commitment to build a new plane in the Seattle area if it was launched during the four-year agreement.
A spokesman for the International Association of Machinists and Aircraft Workers union could not immediately be reached for comment.