SPEEA, Spirit reach tentative labor deal
Published 5:53 am Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Boeing Co. supplier Spirit AeroSystems and its technical workers in Wichita, Kan., have reached a tentative labor contract.
The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace said on Wednesday it is recommending its 2,300 represented professional and technical workers should accept the contract offered by Spirit.
SPEEA and Spirit failed to reach a contract agreement earlier this year when the union’s contract expired on July 28. Since then, the union has tried to increase membership at the Kansas site.
“The increase in membership we experienced in the past two months made a remarkable difference,” Bill Hartig, chair of the SPEEA negotiation team, said in a statement. “The company listened to their employees and made significant improvements to their previous offer.”
The SPEEA-Spirit agreement will be one that union workers at Boeing here in the Puget Sound region will keep an eye on. Boeing’s labor contracts with both its SPEEA-represented workers and its employees represented by the Machinists union expire next year.
The deal between SPEEA and Spirit in Kansas still needs to be voted on by members. If approved, the contract would last nine years and six months, which SPEEA said is longer than it wanted.
Here in the Puget Sound region, Boeing sought a longer term contract with its Machinists union when the company was considering where to build a second 787 production line in 2009. A year earlier, the Machinists staged a 57-day strike when the two couldn’t agree on a new contract. Boeing eventually decided to put a second 787 line in South Carolina.
In Kansas, Bob Brewer, SPEEA’s director for the Midwest, addressed concerns about the long-term deal:
“making sure a long-term contract had the right protections in place was key to these negotiations.”
SPEEA members there will be included in Spirit’s incentive program, with payouts set to increase over the length of the contract so long as the company meets its performance targets.
For more on the Spirit-SPEEA contract, visit the union’s website.
