Members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), the union for aerospace professionals at Boeing, have rejected proposed colle
Members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), the union for aerospace professionals at Boeing, have rejected proposed collective bargaining agreements for two bargaining units and approved strike authorization measures, setting the stage for a possible work stoppage if negotiations do not produce a new deal before current contracts expire.
In voting results released Friday, members of SPEEA’s Professional Unit, which represents nearly 13,000 engineers and scientists at Boeing, rejected the proposed contract with a 64.3% no vote, 7,238 to 4,027.
Members of SPEEA’s Technical Unit, which represents more than 4,000 analysts, designers, technicians, and other specialists, rejected their proposed contract with a 71.9% no vote, 2,795 to 1,094.
At the same time, Professional Unit members approved strike authorization with an 87.8% vote in favor, and Technical Unit members approved strike authorization with an 89.7% vote. SPEEA said 92% of eligible union members voted.
SPEEA negotiators said they plan to immediately survey members to determine what it will take to approve a contract with Boeing, then seek to resume bargaining with the company, now with the ability to call a strike if they decide it is necessary.
No strike could take place before the current contracts expire on Oct. 6.
Sorry, we couldn't load this embedded content
“Our Negotiation Team is prepared and willing to work with the company toward meaningful movement so that we can come to agreement on new contracts before Oct. 6,” the SPEEA team said Friday. “However, we also are prepared to call for a labor stoppage, based on the overwhelming support of our members for the strike authorization vote.”
The union’s Negotiation Team had unanimously endorsed Boeing’s proposed contracts for both the Professional and Technical units.
SPEEA negotiators said Boeing’s pay offer included aggregate wage pool increases of 29.4% over four years, which they described as the largest wage-pool increase for SPEEA members since 1983.
The proposal also included three extra days of paid leave annually, lower limits on mandatory overtime and more opportunities for virtual work, according to the union.
SPEEA negotiators said Boeing also proposed twice-annual meetings between the union and senior executives to discuss future work deployment, along with a joint labor-management committee on the use of Artificial Intelligence.
But as the Negotiation Team began presenting the proposal to the broader membership, starting with the Professional and Technical Bargaining Unit Councils made up of elected union stewards, negotiators said it became clear that many members deeply mistrust Boeing management.
The Bargaining Unit Council for the Technical Unit voted to recommend rejecting its contract, while the Bargaining Unit Council for the Professional Unit did not reach the required 60% supermajority for a recommendation for or against.
“It’s important to acknowledge how we got here; this mistrust was built brick-by-brick over the past several contracts,” Negotiation Team members said. “SPEEA-represented jobs eroded, quality and safety took a backseat to schedule, engineering and technical decisions were overruled or worse, ignored, and salaries failed to keep pace with both the market and inflation.”
Nearly 30 years after Boeing’s merger with McDonnell Douglas, SPEEA negotiators said, “we are all still collectively dealing with the consequences of prior management decisions.”
“The current executive leadership is saying and doing the right things, and the management team that met with us appeared sincere, solution-focused and genuine in their efforts to right the past errors of their predecessors,” the SPEEA team said. “Still, the membership has made clear that the current offer falls short, and without significant improvements to the last offer, they are prepared to strike.”
Ben Nimmergut, Boeing vice president and functional chief engineer for Production Engineering, released the following statement Friday on the SPEEA vote:
We gave a strong contract offer to position our employees among the market leaders in pay and benefits in the Pacific Northwest. We’re disappointed our engineers and technical workforce voted no on our offer. As a result, we are now implementing our strike contingency plan and diverting the dollars we had wanted to invest in our SPEEA-represented team to prepare for a potential strike.
We have no choice but to implement our contingency plan. We have a responsibility to the rest of our workforce and our customers to build on our progress over the last two years and maintain our momentum.
No further talks with SPEEA are scheduled. The earliest a strike could occur is Oct. 7.
