About 27,000 Boeing Machinists – including about 5,000 in Renton – are on strike, after negotiations with The Boeing Co. ended last week without a new three-year contract proposal to present to the union membership.

Pickets were out in force Monday in Renton, considered the first day of the strike, even though it was called for 12:01 a.m. on Saturday.

According to strikers on the picket line at Logan Avenue and Eighth Street, many workers wanted to hold up their signs last Thursday and Friday. However, the union asked that they hold off because the negotiations were continuing in Florida.

So when the strike began officially, many union members, including Steve Averill, a precision rework specialist in Renton, who has worked for Boeing for about 20 years, decided to take what Averill called a 48-hour hiatus.

“We were ready to strike Thursday and Friday,” Averill said Monday morning. “The workers were pretty well organized.”

The members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers earlier had voted 87 percent to go on strike and 83 percent to reject the contract.

Connie Kelliher, a union spokeswoman, acknowledged that some workers were ready to hit the picket lines last week. But she said there were still plenty of workers on the picket lines last weekend.

“There was a faction of members upset by the 48-hour delay,” she said. But the goal of a strike vote, she said, is to bring the company back to the negotiating table.

For the Machinists, the biggest concern in the agreement is the number of “takeaways” in the contract proposal, related to such key employee issues as promotions, sub-contracting and benefits, according to Kelliher.

“Boeing wordsmithed this to death,” she said, “changing one word here and one word there.”

Another big issue for workers is job security, she said.

The strike has stopped production of the 737 at the sprawling Renton plant. The union represents production workers there.

Non-Machinists are continuing to work. Unions representing Boeing workers agree in their contracts that they won’t honor the picket lines of other striking unions.

Boeing spokesman Tim Healy called the Boeing offer the “best in the aerospace industry.”

He doesn’t agree the contract is filled with “takeaways.”

“We are talking about a contract that would put $34,000 in the pocket of the average Machinist over the next three years,” he said.

But the term “average worker,” based on pay, doesn’t sit well with some Boeing workers. The average pay for Boeing workers is about $54,000, but Kelliher said she can point to many workers, including maintenance workers, “who are lucky to reach $20,000,” she said.