While the striking port workers were hogging all the media attention, on the West Coast another strike was quietly easing through its third week. Boeing’s machinists have been on strike since Sept. 13, a costly proposition for all involved. Boeing, which has lost $32 billion over the past five years, has lost production of several aircraft models. The workers are now without pay or health insurance.

The contrast between the two strikes is, well, striking. It took just a few days for the International Longshoremen’s Association to win a 61.5 percent pay increase over six years, with a dispute over port automation to be negotiated later. The machinists, meanwhile, have been out for four weeks, and the latest offer was a 30 percent pay increase over four years. On Tuesday, the company withdrew the offer after talks broke down.

One big difference between the two outcomes is that shippers earned a windfall when the pandemic forced everyone to stay home, cruising shopping websites, while Boeing took big losses as people stopped flying. So shippers should have some money to pay out. The more important difference is that Boeing has global competition, while ports basically have a local monopoly. This distinction, between tradable and non-tradable goods, is key to understanding not just what’s happened to Boeing but also what’s happened to manufacturing workers all over........

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