In a development portrayed as a product of efforts to mend years of bitterly contentious labor relations, Boeing management and leaders of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) have tentatively agreed on a six-year contract extension, the sides announced Wednesday evening. Scheduled for a vote by mail-in ballots between January 27 and February 10, the largely unanticipated agreement comes several months before the current contract’s amendable date.
“These negotiations were possible because SPEEA and Boeing decided not to let our areas of disagreement prevent us from making progress on items where we do agree,” said SPEEA executive director Ray Goforth. “These contract extensions are the result of a lot of hard work and good will. Hopefully, this gives us a template for the future.”
Negotiations grew from discussions during regular meetings between the union and Boeing in recent months, said SPEEA. Calling both sides receptive to avoiding confrontation that characterized past negotiations, the SPEEA member-elected executive board began formal talks with Boeing after the holiday break. Several of the elected officials served on previous union contract negotiation teams.
During the last round of negotiations involving SPEEA, 96 percent of the union members voted down Boeing’s first contract offer in September 2012. Tensions only heightened after SPEEA filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board on October 5 accusing Boeing officials of videotaping union members engaged in “solidarity” marches, seizing employees’ cameras and deleting photos of their activities during lunchtime rallies in Portland, Oregon; and Everett, Washington. By February a strike appeared imminent. Not until Boeing extended most elements of the previous contracts, including 5 percent annual wage pools and no increases to employees for medical coverage, did the engineers narrowly agree to a deal on February 19. Following a second rejection, technical workers finally accepted the same offer in a third vote counted a month later.
This time, both sides struck a more conciliatory tone. “This tentative agreement recognizes the significant contributions of our engineering and technical workforce and reinforces Boeing's commitment to the Puget Sound region,” said Boeing Commercial Airplanes president and CEO Ray Conner.
SPEEA called elements in the new offer that would help employees affected by the decisions by the company to move work “a major improvement,” while praising the company’s commitment to use “exhaustive” efforts to place individuals affected by any such moves. If placement efforts fail, said the union, laid-off workers would receive a minimum of 26 to a maximum of 60 weeks of pay—or two weeks per year of service—and six months of medical and dental coverage. Those protections would come with a doubling of the existing voluntary layoff benefits.
For Boeing’s part, the deal would finally do away with the last vestiges of its traditional pension plan for SPEEA-represented employees hired before March 2013. A new retirement savings program would include a new special company retirement contribution and “enhanced” 401(k) transition contributions. All other employees represented by the union already participate in a new retirement savings program.
While the majority of the union’s members work at Boeing facilities in the Puget Sound region, the contract offers also cover workers in Oregon, Utah, California and Florida.