New blood leads Boeing’s Machinists Union

You’ve probably never heard of Jon Holden, but he has the toughest job at Boeing right now. He has to unify the Machinists Union and pick up the pieces from the bitter contract vote that ensured decades worth of work but cost members their traditional pension plan.

Jon Holden is just 41. He’s been with Boeing for 14 years and for ten of those years he was a full-time union rep. He was a Teamster early in his career while working at the Safeway warehouse in Bellevue.

Holden is not wearing rose-colored glasses, he knows there is tough work ahead. “I think our first order of business is to focus on our relationship with our members, and we have a lot of plans to engage our members and work with them to bring them back to a position of strength and unity,” he said.

Holden said union members are angry. They are confused. They don’t know who has their back after how the contract vote went down, and that’s coming from members who voted yes and voted no. “We have a lot of work to do to bring people back together,” he said.

But Holden said Boeing shouldn’t think of this union as weak just because it gave up a major benefit in the take-it-or-leave-it contract offer.

“We’re still a strong union that has gone through a tumultuous time that we need to rebuild from,” he said. “We have to acknowledge what we went through.”

Holden is not your typical old-school union leader, at least if his plans are any indication. He wants to pull back the curtain for all members, something previous union leaders would have likely never considered. He wants to get them more involved in how the union works and makes decisions. Gone are the days of what the members need to know is what we tell them they need to know with all the important discussions held behind closed doors.

Holden promises town hall meetings, membership conferences and regular updates on talks with the company.
That, he believes, will give the rank and file more of a stake in their union and create better unity.

Of course, Holden still has to mend fences with the national chapter of the IAM, which worked behind the locals’ back to get the contract done.

His plate is full.

Holden won 75 percent of the vote, beating out John “Shop Floor” Lopez Jr. and Roy Wilkinson, but less than 3,000 members voted. The union has more than 30,000 active members.