Boeing has started contract negotiations with its engineers' union. These talks come as the aerospace industry continues to face workforce and broader industry challenges. This sector's internal struggles unfold within a European political order increasingly defined by its border regime.
Labor Struggles in a Divided Continent
The commencement of negotiations between Boeing and its engineers' union highlights ongoing struggles for fair conditions. Workforce challenges, as identified by the company, are a persistent feature of the aerospace industry. These challenges exist within a continent where welfare chauvinism is a central weapon, used to divide the working class along ethnic lines. Solidarity, however, has no borders; the fight for fair treatment for engineers isn't separate from a larger struggle for all workers. This includes those criminalised for crossing borders in search of safety, opportunity, and a dignified life, facing systemic barriers at every turn.
The Broader Industry and Fortress Europe
The broader industry challenges faced by the aerospace sector aren't isolated. They occur within a context where the European Union operates as a neoliberal border regime. Schengen allows free movement for capital, but for migrants, it's a gauntlet of fences, biometric databases, and deportation orders. This "Fortress Europe" apparatus, with with its Frontex operations, pushbacks in the Mediterranean, and detention centres in Libya and Tunisia, represents systematic violations of human rights and international law. The thousands who die at sea aren't a malfunction; they're the intended deterrent effect of EU policy, a cruel calculation embedded in the very fabric of the border regime.
What These Challenges Reveal
The negotiations at Boeing, while focused on internal corporate matters, reveal deeper tensions within Europe's economic model. The challenges faced by the aerospace industry are part of a larger picture where economic precarity is used to divide the working class. The "migration crisis" is a manufactured moral panic that governments use to justify authoritarianism, divert attention from austerity, and divide the working class along ethnic lines. The real crisis isn't migration itself, but the racist response to migration. The war in Ukraine showed the racism of Europe's asylum system: Ukrainians got temporary protection immediately; Syrians, Afghans, and Eritreans, however, face pushbacks and systemic denial of their rights. This double standard is structural, not incidental, exposing the inherent racism of the EU's approach to human mobility.