Also infuriating workers were radio ads that recently aired after Boeing made its "best and final" offer last week. The company sought to bypass union leaders with the ads, Wise says, and persuade members to vote for the contract. Such tactics have inspired the union to accuse Boeing of unfair labor practices, although legal experts say the charge is unlikely to stand.

For its part, Boeing argues its approach was aimed at getting quickly at what workers wanted, and narrowing down the terms to what would be acceptable.

Management began bargaining months ago by meeting with union leaders to figure out what would fly and what wouldn't, and then made changes based on the reactions. The company argues that its offer is the best contract in the industry, and that so-called givebacks — the medical cost shifts, for instance — would be far less onerous than what other companies are demanding.

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Plenty of skeptics
Some outside observers don't buy management's view. "The company has been engaged in an unproductive and really inexplicable pattern of negotiation with this union," says professor James Gregory, who directs a labor studies center at the University of Washington in Seattle. "The company seems to push the union whenever it can and comes forward with proposals — and often insists on them — that workers find unfair."

On the other hand, there are plenty of skeptics who say such changes as the shifting of medical costs and the end of traditional pensions are now simply the norm in Corporate America. They argue the union is acting like it's living in the past.

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"Who has pensions anymore?" asks Boston lawyer Donald Schroeder, who practices labor law for companies. "Unions have had the Mercedes-Benz of health-care plans, but health-care costs have spiraled out of control. Somebody's got to pay for that."

At the end of the day, Boeing's union feels that it now has the company over a barrel. Boeing can't afford to postpone the Dreamliner any further, since delays may have already cost it some $2 billion or more.

This is a far cry from the hard times of 2002, when the union couldn't muster a two-thirds vote to back a strike, even though a majority of workers had opposed a contract. And the company is better off than in 2005, when the IAM struck for about four weeks and wound up getting no wage hikes.

The question now is whether workers will be so angry that they get a relatively strong offer from management — and still walk.

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