Who Won the U.S. Presidential Debate?

Boeing bosses are staring down the barrel.

The twists and turns of the past week paint a picture of managers badly wrong-footed by the depth of fury among workers who tossed out a 25% pay increase deal and launched strike action.

"They probably didn't think that we had enough people for the strike," Kushal Varma, a Boeing mechanic, told Reuters. "But this is a movement of people who are willing to put their livelihoods on the line to get what's fair." With little time to regroup, and pressure mounting, management enters a fresh week of talks to contain the crisis at the $97 billion US aerospace champion.

A week ago, Boeing executives believed they'd done enough to secure the pay deal with around 33 000 workers in Washington state, the heart of the company's global manufacturing operations, according to two people directly involved in the talks that have played out at Seattle's upscale Westin hotel.

The company's initial pay increase offer had been about 12%, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential and unreported details about the horse-trading, though that number gradually crept up during the weeks of negotiations.

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