The Boeing Co. and the International Association of Machinists have reached an agreement on how to pick and train the people who lead factory work teams.
The dispute over team leaders was one of the factors that led to last fall’s Machinists union strike, said Roy Moore, who led the union bargaining team that worked toward the agreement.
The union still is not fully embracing the team leader concept, Moore said. But the talks that continued after the Machinists returned to work in October have led to an arrangement that it can accept for now, he said.
“We’ll see what happens over the duration of this contract,” Moore said. “We still have a lot of apprehension about team leader.”
The team leader issue has its roots in the 2002 contract talks between Boeing and the union. The company proposed creating a new job category of workers that would supersede traditional factory leads, who are chosen by seniority.
Boeing argued that workers chosen by seniority didn’t necessarily have the skills and training to handle necessary tasks, such as helping to determine daily assignments for other workers, fostering communication within the group and with other groups, and working to coordinate schedules.
The union, however, saw it as an attack on time-honored traditions.
“It tore apart our seniority,” Moore said. “They could pick anyone they wanted regardless of seniority.”
The 2002 contract was ratified, and Boeing began phasing in the team leader system at its Puget Sound-area plants.
Team leaders were still an issue when last year’s contract talks began. Rank-and-file union members complained that team leaders got only the barest of training, and there was no set process for picking who got the assignments – and the $1.75 an hour pay premium that comes with them.
The union barred its shop stewards from applying for the positions, Moore added, which meant that many of the most natural leaders on each team weren’t getting picked.
Boeing management, however, noted that where team leaders had been put into place, productivity had climbed and overtime costs had fallen.
As part of the settlement of the 28-day strike, the two sides agreed to continue talking about changes to the system. The result: more preliminary training for team leader applicants, a standardized interviewing system and an agreement to study what kind of training is needed for team leaders, and what is already offered by either Boeing or the union.
The new process also better defines duties, clearly drawing the lines between team leaders and management, Moore said. “They’re an hourly employee. They’re not like a junior supervisor.”
But the key issue was an agreement that seniority would be the tie-breaker if there were two or more qualified applicants.
That “helped put us a little bit closer,” Moore said. “If you’ve paid your dues and done the time, you should be given the opportunity, as a senior employee.”
With the new process, team leaders should help Boeing be more productive, Moore said. “They’re out on the shop floor. They should know the work intimately, what needs to get done.”
A Boeing spokesman said the company and the union “successfully partnered to modify the team leader selection process,” and added the that “union supports this new process.”
The new system “has a lot more substance,” Moore said, but the union’s not fully enamoured with it.
“We still have a lot of work to do to get it where we’d like to see it,” he said.
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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