Without Looking Back

"[Washington] state's largest newspaper urged the machinists to take the new [Boeing] deal, apparently subscribing to the theory that extortion is the new compromise."
John Levesque, "Flying South" Seattle Business January 2014 issue.

Compromise is more than two parties reaching an agreement that benefits them both, even if it doesn't give either side everything that they may have wanted. Compromise is generally two parties reaching an agreement that benefits them both, even if it doesn't give either side everything that they may have wanted because it's the best option available to either of them.

Boeing can turn to what is effectively extortion (demanding that the machinists union give back pension and health benefits that had been granted in earlier negotiations) because, and everyone knows this, they have a much better Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement than the machinists do (even if the machinists' union sees the situation differently). By the same token, the Washington state legislature has, in Levesque's words: "offered the biggest tax break ever registered by the Institute of Servility and Submissiveness" because they perceive (correctly or not) that Boeing going somewhere else will hurt them as much or more than it will hurt Boeing. And in a zero-sum game, where the jobs that remain in the Puget Sound area aren't available to bolster economies and tax revenues in other parts of the country, Boeing is in a position to say "let's you and him fight."

One of the truisms of the modern world is that you can't go to someone as a supplicant and expect to be treated as an equal. Beggars, it has been noted, can't be choosers. Workers who are reduced to begging for the opportunity to support themselves and governments that must plead for taxable workers - parties that don't have the option of walking away - are going to be extorted because that's the way the system is set up. You can't negotiate with someone who knows that they hold a better hand that you do. They're going to extort you. That's the way the game is played.