Getting down to details

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, November 1, 2005

This is a great time to be an engineer at the Boeing Co.

That’s the message management is sending as it sits down to negotiate a new contract with the union for its commercial airplane engineers and technicians.

“There’s just a lot of buzz around this place,” said Mike Denton, Boeing’s vice president of commercial airplane engineering, who will be part of management’s negotiating team. “The team’s worked really hard to get to this point. We need to acknowledge that in the contract.”

At the same time, however, Boeing must keep an eye on its bottom line, Denton said. “Airlines are desperate for lower prices,” he said. “We just can’t drive our costs up.”

Negotiators for Boeing and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace sat down Tuesday morning to start a final round of face-to-face negotiations on a new contract. About 17,700 Puget Sound engineers and technical workers are covered by the contracts, along with 785 engineers in Wichita, Kan.

Talks will continue until Nov. 15, when Boeing is expected to present its final offer. The union will conduct a vote-by-mail election on the proposal, and is expected to count votes for the Puget Sound contract Dec. 1. Wichita votes will be counted Dec. 5.

Denton said Boeing learned from this fall’s 28-day Machinists union strike. The lesson, he said, is to make sure managers understand what are the most important things workers want, and then work with the union bargaining team to satisfy that.

“Our focus is to get it right the first time,” Denton said.

SPEEA leaders are clear on one thing: They want more money for their workers.

“Boeing is market-leading,” said Charles Bofferding, SPEEA’s executive director. “We think our salaries should be market-leading.”

If you look at total compensation, including wages, benefits and bonuses, Boeing is a market leader, Denton said. “I feel really good about what the company offers the employee.”

During these first few days of contract talks, negotiators for both sides will share market data and “try to reach consensus on where we are relative to market,” Denton said. The negotiations will go forward from there. That was the process Boeing and SPEEA used in the 2002 contact talks, and “that was a very effective process,” he said.

Three years ago, 88 percent of union members voted to accept Boeing’s contract offer, a marked turnaround from the 1999 contract talks, which stalled, eventually leading to the 40-day SPEEA strike of 2000.

This time, many of the same people who successfully worked out the 2002 contract are back at the negotiating committee. Denton said that fact “gives me confidence. I want to keep the momentum going.”

Since 2002, Boeing has launched the 787 program, plus new versions of the 737 and 777, and the company is close to a decision on a new 747 model.

That means there are “exciting jobs for people to work on,” Denton said. “It’s been an exciting three years.”

Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.

Associated Press

Charles Bofferding (second from left), executive director of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, makes a point Tuesday during the first day of contract negotiations with the Boeing Co. in Seattle. Jerry Calhoun, Boeing’s lead negotiator, is in the foreground.