Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing

by Peter Robison

Speea was an open shop, meaning membership wasn’t a condition of employment; only about half of the represented workers actually paid dues. On the morning of February 9, 2000, the day of a planned strike, Sorscher waited alone outside the 737 factory on the south end of Lake Washington, his only company three circling seagulls. Doubts began wheeling through his head, too: was it foolish to think highly paid professionals, many of them PhDs like him, would actually strike? At the appointed hour of nine a.m., all was still quiet. Sorscher went over to a few guys sharing a cigarette in the parking lot and asked if they’d seen anybody around. Just us, they said. Ten long minutes after nine, hundreds of engineers streamed out. They were late because they’d marched around the factory, cheering and clapping, as machinists on the assembly line shouted encouragement. Thousands packed into a nearby football stadium, where the brainiacs finally looked like a real union, roaring chants like “No nerds, no birds!”