Here is your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, August 12th.

Today on Forbes, Boeing's Bad Year is about to get worse.

Boeing's Machinist Union has been urging members to save money for a strike since 2019.

Today, Monday, August 12th, the negotiations that will determine whether they need it will kick into high gear.

Teams from Boeing Management and the International Association of Machinists, or IAM,

the company's largest union that represents the 32,000 workers who assemble Boeing Plains in Washington State,

we'll check into a Seattle area hotel to hammer out a new contract, the first since 2008, before the current one expires on September 12th.

Many industry observers think the two sides are headed for an impasse and a strike. That would exacerbate the pile of problems Boeing is struggling

with this year following a midair blowout of a panel on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max

Jet in January that has led to increased government scrutiny of the company's

manufacturing and a steep slowdown in production as Boeing tries to improve quality.

A lengthy work stoppage could derail the ramp up and plane deliveries that the company desperately needs to stop bleeding cash.

It's anyone's guess how the situation will be handled by Boeing's brand new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, Anyone's

brand new CEO,

Kelly Ortberg, who reported to work just last Thursday,

with the tall task of repairing Boeing

and its relationship with its workers, customers, the government, and the public.

The machinist's leverage is high, given skilled labor shortages.

35% of jobs at U.S. durable goods manufacturers were unfilled as of June. of members. Over the past decade, Boeing executives used the threat of relocating work away from the Seattle area to negotiate a series of contract extensions that held wages stagnant, took away workers pension plans, and shifted health care costs to them.

Last month, the members of Lodge 751 of the International Association of Machinists voted 99.9% in favor of authorizing their leadership to call a strike.

This happened in a raucous meeting of some 20,000 workers at Baseball's Seattle Mariner Stadium.

The machinists have a long list of demands that could be hard for the company to swallow,

...