By Bryan Corliss
Herald Writer
A leadership split has developed within the union representing engineers and technicians at the Boeing Co., even as their negotiating teams prepare to meet with the company to hammer out the first new contract since a bitter 1999 strike.
The union’s national council on Friday will vote on a petition to recall the recently elected president and treasurer of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace.
At the same time, other members of the union are circulating a petition to have Charles Bofferding, the union’s longtime executive director, removed from his post.
The conflict is sharp enough that some union members are calling it a civil war.
"This is not a real happy thing for us," said Roger Pullman, an electrical engineer at the Everett factory, one of the people behind the recall efforts.
The union’s contract expires in December, and the split could weaken SPEEA’s hand at the bargaining table, Bofferding acknowledged.
Conversely, he added, it also will make it harder for Boeing managers to work with the union in ways that benefit both sides.
The recall petitions focus on SPEEA President Tom Day, an engineer at Boeing’s Auburn plant, and treasurer Mike Dunn, an engineer at Kent.
Day and Dunn were elected in March, with Dunn topping two-term incumbent Craig Buckham in a five-way race, 1,758 to 1,586.
The union’s national council on Friday will take up the petitions at its national convention in Seattle. If the motions are approved, union members will be asked to vote on whether to remove the two from office, SPEEA spokesman Bill Dugovich said. No date has been set for that, but "the goal would be to hold it as soon as reasonably possible," he said.
It will take a two-thirds vote of the union council Friday to put the recall question to the full membership, said Pat Waters, chairman of the union’s national council.
Day and Dunn ran as part of the Dedicated Unionists slate. Their platform was critical of Bofferding and the previous executive board, which had given Bofferding a number of raises and perks, including the use of a Dodge Durango sport utility vehicle.
The Dedicated Unionists group now is circulating a petition to remove Bofferding from his job as SPEEA’s top staffer, and then eliminate the position of executive director. Copies of the petition are available on the group’s Web site, www.speea.net.
On the Web site, the group accuses Bofferding of lying, spin doctoring, abusing his authority and ignoring members.
"He got the Durango and a huge bonus," the Web site proclaims. "Had enough? Let’s abolish the executive director."
Bofferding dismissed the allegations as "misfacts and inuendos screamed in a very public fashion," but declined to discuss them specifically.
"We’re going to have an internal discussion Friday where people can get all the facts," he said.
Meanwhile, Day and Dunn have come under fire themselves.
According to the recall petitioners, the two and some other engineers this spring had a private meeting with Boeing Commercial Airplane Group chief Alan Mulally in which they discussed globalization issues.
Day and Dunn told the union’s leadership they planned to have the meetings and had promised to brief them and the contract negotiating team before talking about their ideas with Mulally.
But then they met with Mulally first, according to Pullman, a SPEEA council member who drafted the petition to recall Day and is a co-sponsor of the petition to recall Dunn.
That infuriated members of the union’s contract negotiating team, members said, because it appeared that Day talked to Boeing management outside normal channels.
Globalization — spreading Boeing jobs around the globe — is one of the issues the union wants to address during contract talks this fall, Pullman said. Having the union president develop and present his own agenda to management "really undermines the negotiating effort," he said. "We absolutely need to have one team speaking for us."
Bofferding said the union could emerge from the strife stronger.
"This could be a very positive thing for SPEEA," he said. "I don’t think we should run from public votes. If the members don’t want us, we should leave."
Day could not be reached for comment at work or at his home on Wednesday.
You can call Herald Writer Bryan Corliss at 425-339-3454
or send e-mail to corliss@heraldnet.com.
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