Tom Buffenbarger, retired International President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast as the independent labor voice to discuss three stories he finds significant in the labor movement.
Buffenbarger discussed Boeing's production recovery under new CEO Kelly Ortberg. He described it as the most consequential change at the company in years. The new executive’s approach to worker relationships is meaningfully different from that of his predecessors, he added. Buffenbarger also addressed the real-world impact of tariffs on manufacturing workers, using the auto industry as the clearest example of how tariff uncertainty is suppressing investment and causing layoffs, even among profitable companies.
Finally, Buffenbarger broke down what the One Big Beautiful Bill means for working families, describing Medicaid cuts that will affect tens of millions of people and SNAP reductions that will fall hardest on children, veterans and working families who are already stretched thin.
- Boeing's new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, who came to the company from Rockwell Collins, has taken a fundamentally different approach to IAM relations than his predecessors. He is meeting directly with District 751 members and local union representatives, reinstating a president's advisory committee giving the union a direct channel to leadership and committing to keeping manufacturing in the Puget Sound region. Buffenbarger said the early signals are the best he has seen in years, but cautioned that the proof will be in the sustained execution.
- Tariff uncertainty is suppressing manufacturing investment and causing layoffs across the auto sector, even among profitable companies. Buffenbarger described a pattern where companies cannot make long-term capital decisions without knowing what their input costs will be. He used Stellantis as an example of a profitable company laying off workers because it cannot predict future costs with sufficient certainty to justify maintaining current production levels. The uncertainty itself is more damaging in some ways than a high tariff would be, because businesses can plan around a known cost but cannot plan around an unpredictable one.
- The One Big Beautiful Bill's Medicaid cuts will affect approximately 11 million to 12 million people currently enrolled in the program, Buffenbarger said, describing the mechanism as not an outright cut but a work requirement and verification system so burdensome. He believes a large share of eligible recipients will lose coverage not because they are ineligible but because the administrative burden is designed to cause them to fall off the rolls. Further, SNAP reductions in the bill will shift costs to states that cannot absorb them, resulting in benefit reductions for children, veterans and working families who depend on nutrition assistance, he said.
Boeing: A CEO Who Is Actually Talking to Workers
Buffenbarger has watched Boeing's relationship with the IAM closely for decades and said the arrival of Kelly Ortberg as CEO represents the most significant cultural shift he has seen at the company in years. Ortberg came from Rockwell Collins, a company with a long history of collaborative labor relations. He brought that background to Boeing, and it has been evident in his approach since he arrived.
Ortberg has met directly with members of IAM District 751, the largest Boeing Local Union, rather than routing all communication through management layers. He reinstated the president's advisory committee, a formal channel providing union leadership with direct access to Boeing's CEO. He has expressed his commitment to keeping Boeing's manufacturing in the Puget Sound region of Washington State, a statement that carries enormous significance for the tens of thousands of machinists whose careers depend on that commitment holding, Buffenbarger said.
The company is still recovering production rates that fell during the machinists’ strike and the quality and safety crisis that preceded it. Buffenbarger said the recovery is real but not complete. What he said gives him more confidence than the production numbers is the tone at the top. Companies behave the way their CEOs model. If the CEO shows respect for workers and treats the union as a partner rather than an obstacle, that attitude filters through management over time, he said. IAM's relationship with Boeing has improved substantially, and he expects it to continue improving as long as Ortberg stays the course.
Tariffs: Uncertainty Is the Real Problem
Buffenbarger acknowledged a position that makes him unusual among labor leaders: he has historically supported strategic tariffs to protect domestic manufacturing from unfair foreign competition. He supported steel tariffs and trade enforcement against countries that manipulate their currencies and subsidize production to undercut American workers.
The problem with the current tariff environment is not the tariffs themselves but the way they have been implemented, he said. Tariffs that change week to week, get paused, then applied again or are threatened against trading partners and then negotiated away, are not tools for protecting domestic manufacturing. They are sources of uncertainty that make long-term investment impossible.
Buffenbarger referenced Stellantis. It is not a company that is losing money. It is a company that cannot tell its board of directors what its input costs will be next quarter, let alone in three years when the capital investments it is considering today would begin generating returns. Unable to answer that question, the company laid off workers. That pattern, Buffenbarger said, is playing out across the auto sector and beyond. Profitable companies are reducing their workforces not because the business is bad, but because the planning horizon has disappeared.
The solution is not to abandon tariffs, he said, but to use them as tools with clear objectives, transparent timelines and consistent application so American manufacturers can actually plan around them.
The Big Beautiful Bill: What It Actually Does to Working Families
Buffenbarger described the One Big Beautiful Bill, the administration's signature legislative package, as an exercise in taking from working families and giving to those who already have enough. He focused his complaints on two provisions: Medicaid and SNAP.
On Medicaid, he said the bill does not eliminate the program on paper. It does impose work requirements and verification procedures that are so complex that a large share of currently eligible recipients will lose coverage because they fail to navigate the administrative system correctly. Buffenbarger cited estimates suggesting 11 million to 12 million people currently enrolled in Medicaid will lose coverage as a result. Many of those people are working. Others are children of working families. The connection between Medicaid and working people is real and direct, and the loss of coverage will fall hardest on the communities least equipped to absorb it.
On SNAP, the bill shifts costs to states. States facing a larger share of SNAP costs without corresponding budget increases will reduce benefits. The people who depend on SNAP, children, veterans, elderly people on fixed incomes and working families who do not earn enough to cover basic nutrition needs, will see their benefits reduced as a direct result of the federal cost shift, he said.
Buffenbarger said the bill's tax cuts primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations. The spending reductions that fund those cuts come primarily from programs that working families depend on. The IAM and the broader labor movement will continue to address that connection publicly and loudly, he said.
More information on the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers is available at goiam.org.
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