And I am willing to bet that a stipulated part of the agreement is to hire back the ones who were fired if they are union members. Because fuck that shit and fuck management
I wish it would become standard to report these things not as a single number, but as yearly increases paired with the contract duration. That would make it much easier to put them into context, and compare them to other deals or inflation.
Just the number alone without context can also be straight up misleading. I remember that when train personel went on strike here in Germany, I saw some articles comparing the demand and offer by just mentioning that single number, and they seemed fairly close. Well, one was over 2 and the other over 3 years, making them massively different in practice.
It's intentional. Big number makes big headlines plus paints union as greedy, . demanding enormous raises the rest of us only dream of (or maybe we should join a union?)
The US government wouldn't let Boeing fall. As much as I'd love seeing that happen, the strategic importance of having a US-based manufacturer for large commercial airplanes is too large to let them go bust. The US as a country would buy themselves a lot of dependency on other countries through potential tariffs, etc.