William Patalon III says Boeing (NYSE:BA) faces a difficult period of negotiations to end a machinist strike that could last more than a month. With Wall Street estimating daily losses of $100 million in sales, this could seriously damage the company’s finances.

More from today’s Money Morning…

Just one day after The Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA) was notified that a multi-billion-dollar U.S. Air Force tanker competition has been put on hold, the embattled aerospace firm said it was steeling itself for a long strike by its hourly work force.

Boeing’s commercial aircraft production areas were quiet Monday after the manufacturer’s 27,000 machinists walked off the company’s jetliner assembly lines to protest a proposed labor contract they contend falls far short of what’s fair in terms of health-care benefits and job security, MarketWatch.com reported.

On Wednesday, Boeing Chief Financial Officer James A. Bell said the company expects the strike to last at least 30 days and said the job action will cause additional delays in its vaunted 787 Dreamliner commercial jet, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.

“I think there’ll be at least a one-month delay,” Bell said Wednesday at a Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) conference Webcast from Dana Point, Calif. “Right now, it’s a one-for-one day slip on the 787 and all other programs as well.”

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Union continued its tough talk.

“We will continue this fight ‘one day longer’ than the company can afford until they meet our demands,” the union told its members via a late-Sunday posting on its Web site, the P-I reported.

Tom Buffenbarger, the union’s national leader, told The Seattle Times that if the strike costs Boeing $100 million a day in lost sales, as many Wall Street analysts predict, it will take strikers one month and a week to drain the company’s $10 billion cash reserve.

As of now, no new talks have been scheduled.

With the Dreamliner program already 14 months or more behind schedule, the strike now puts in jeopardy Boeing’s plans to test-fly the jet in November and to start deliveries in the third quarter of 2009. Parts shortages and supplier issues have created delays. Boeing has distributed production of the airplane throughout the world.

While conceding that there are still “significant issues” between Boeing and the union, Bell, the company CFO, said “we’ll never get to a complete impasse.”

Although the dispute over the use of outside contractors to perform work that union workers have done in the past is the main sticking point, Bell noted that it’s also “not the only issue we’re apart on.”

On Aug. 28, Boeing offered the employees who make parts and actually assemble the jet aircraft a wage-and-benefits package that includes an 11% raise over three years, bonuses, and a 14% improvement in retirement-pension payments. Boeing also shifted healthcare costs to workers via higher co-pays and medical deductibles.

But the union wanted a 13% raise.

Source: With Tanker Deal Shelved, Boeing Must Dig in For Possible Long Strike