SPEEA starts
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, November 1, 2005
Contract talks between Boeing and the union for engineers and technicians got underway Tuesday. Officially, the two sides reported that the tone of the first day’s talks was “positive and optimistic with a shared commitment among all participants for a successful outcome.”
Here’s a link to the full text of the joint statement: http://active.boeing.com/bca/negotiations/pdf/SPEEA-Boeing_Message_110105.pdf
As I’ve noted previously, Boeing’s contract talks with SPEEA will be different from the Machinists talks in both style and subtance. Tuesday’s joint statement is an indication of that — SPEEA’s style is joint problem solving, working together with management toward a common goal. This approach worked well in 2002, when 88 percent of SPEEA members approved Boeing’s contract offer. Of course the 1999 talks were a different story — a stalemate that led to the 40-day strike of 2000.
As for substance, where the Machinists were willing to forego pay raises to get bigger pensions, the engineers want money. They may have a little more leverage — Boeing is steadily transforming itself into an aerospace engineering firm (instead of an aerospace manufacturer) — and that requires engineers. And with the tech sector of the Northwest economy on the rebound — and aerospace starting to come back worldwide — there’s more demand for people with their technical skills.
For its part, Boeing management says it learned from the IAM strike that it needs to listen more closely to what the workers want.
Here are my two most-recent columns, which covered all this in more detail.
Key Quote, from my Oct. 27 column http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/05/10/26/100bus_corliss001.cfm :
“Demand for engineers and technical workers is high, and if Boeing wants to keep its top talent, it needs to increase their pay, (SPEEA executive director Charles) Bofferding said. Raises of 2 percent, plus inflation, would be ‘a good benchmark,’ he said.”
Key Quote, from today’s column http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/05/11/02/100bus_speea001.cfm :
“‘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.’”
In other Boeing labor news, Machinists who work on Boeing rocket programs in California, Florida and Alabama went out on strike at midnight. Here’s a story on that from the Associated Press http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/02/AR2005110200324.html and an analysis by TheStreet.com http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/markets/rosssnel/10250930.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
I don’t follow Boeing’s IDS units very closely, plus I’ve been out sick a couple days, so this one kinda snuck up on me. But the issues sort of sound familiar to anyone who followed IAM District 751’s strike against Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes Group up here.
Key Quote (from the AP story): “The machinists say Boeing has proposed ending retirement health care coverage for new employees and wants to eliminate caps on out-of-pocket expenses for medical premiums and co-pays.”
Key Quote (from TheStreet): “The strike is likely to affect satellite launch operations at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida, along with facilities in Torrance and Huntington Beach, Calif., and Decatur and Huntsville, Ala.”
