Key labor board vote upcoming on SPEEA

They may be building airplanes in Wichita, Kan., but the Boeing Co. and one of its largest unions appear headed for a train wreck.

Negotiators for the company and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace are in the early stages of working out a new contract for 3,500 technical and professional workers in Wichita. A contract vote is set for Feb. 19

But while that’s happening, some of the represented workers have succeeded in getting the National Labor Relations Board to set a vote on whether to dissolve the bargaining unit, a vote scheduled on Feb. 12. If they succeed with this decertification vote, the contract talks would cease and the existing pact would be void.

As if that weren’t drama enough, on Friday, SPEEA filed unfair labor practice charges against Boeing with the labor board, claiming that the company was actively campaigning in support of the anti-union group, instead of staying neutral on the issue as required by law.

The union accuses the company of going as far as to place a couple of former managers into jobs covered by the union so that they could help organize the decertification campaign, using company computers on company time.

The NLRB responded to the charges by categorizing them as potential Type 2 violations, which, under the rules, means that if its investigation finds wrong-doing by Boeing, then the Feb. 12 decertification vote would be called off.

Confused?

I sure am, especially since this is a dogfight involving SPEEA, which, in case you’ve forgotten, approved its last Puget Sound contract with an 88 percent yes vote back in December 2002.

Sure, we all remember the 40-day strike in 2000, the high-tech burn barrels and "No Nerds, No Birds" picket signs.

But the last round of talks were a labor-management love-fest. Both sides talked glowingly of forming partnerships for the future.

"The Boeing Co. is our company," SPEEA chief Charles Bofferding said then. "It’s our sweat. It’s our blood. It’s our decades of experience. We’re not going to see a fight destroy it."

Barely a year has passed, and now a fight seems in the offing.

Bofferding now is blasting Boeing, telling The Wichita Eagle that the company was "mounting another mean-spirited, anti-union campaign with the clear intent of taking union representation away from these employees."

The employees themselves are a mix of white-collar workers, including drafters, designers, computer programmers, buyers, planners and general office workers.

They’ve only been part of SPEEA since 2000, when union backers won a narrow 65-vote victory to form the bargaining unit, in one of the biggest wins for organized labor in the past decade.

If the vote does come off, it will likely be another close one.

About 45 percent of the workers in the bargaining unit are dues-paying SPEEA members, the union says. To get the NLRB to agree to the decertification vote, the anti-union group needed signatures from at least 30 percent of the unit.

That leaves the decision in the hands of the remaining 25 percent.