Already high inventories of titanium could rise even higher after Boeing employees called a strike at an assembly plant in Long Beach, California. Nearly all of the 1700 unionised workers at the plant jet went on strike on 11 May and indefinitely stopped production of Boeing’s C-17 military cargo jet. Some 3000 non-unionised employees remained on the job. Boeing said in February it would cut production at the Long Beach plant by one-third in order to delay a planned closure in mid-2012 and keep the plant going while the company seeks more C-17 orders. Elsewhere, machinists at a Boeing defence plant in St Louis have authorised a strike if they do not reach an agreement with management before the current contract expires in June. Some 2700 Boeing employees in Washington, Oregon and Kansas went on strike for eight weeks in 2008, shutting down commercial airplane production and delaying the new 787 and the new version of the 747.