Boeing engineers union has strike contingency plan
SEATTLE -- With contract talks covering about 21,000 Boeing Co. white-collar workers behind schedule, their union is beefing up contingency plans for what would be the second strike against the aerospace company in less than a year.
The president of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace said it was likely to reach an agreement with management Thursday on a contract -- less than a day after negotiators reported new "stumbling blocks" in the talks.
"We're pretty close," union president Cynthia Cole told The Seattle Times, just before she headed back into another session of talks late Wednesday. "We see a lot of good things in what we are looking at."
Union members would have to ratify any contract offer.
A federal mediator who had been monitoring the talks began participating actively Tuesday, the day Boeing representatives once planned to present their final offer.
Bill Dugovich said Wednesday the union was awaiting unspecified information from Boeing. In a Web posting late Tuesday, SPEEA's chief negotiator, Ray Goforth, said the talks had been hampered by "incomplete responses from Boeing on a number of key issues."
Boeing spokeswoman Karen M. Fincutter would not comment on the information requests.
Both sides said they were prepared to continue talking as long as progress was being made. Key issues include job outsourcing, pay, retirement benefits, medical coverage and complex jurisdictional issues.
In a statement Wednesday night, the union said a representative from its Utah Council attended Wednesday's bargaining as an observer. Boeing has proposed removing the Utah engineers from the contract, a proposal the union said it views as a first step toward fragmenting it.
The company is working to present a final offer by the end of the week, but "it's all subject to the negotiations," Fincutter said. "We're not up against a strict deadline."
SPEEA's two contracts expire Dec. 1 but can be extended by union leaders. The union represents nearly 20,000 engineers, scientists, computer operators, manual writers and other employees in and around Seattle and about 550 in Oregon, Utah and California. A strike would not likely begin before early December at the soonest.
Training for picket captains is set to begin next Tuesday, according to SPEEA's Web site, which also highlighted previously posted strike advice, preparations and contingencies -- including 8 pages of instructions and color photographs on how to make a burn barrel.
In the last month "we've ramped up" strike planning, Dugovich said.
No picket signs have been printed, a step that will be taken only if a walkout is scheduled by union leaders following a vote by SPEEA members to authorize a strike, Dugovich said.
Both sides want to avoid another strike following an eight-week Machinists union walkout that ended Nov. 2 after shutting down Boeing's commercial aircraft assembly plants, cutting revenue by more than $100 million a day, forcing subcontractors around the world to lay off workers and costing strikers an average of more than $7,000.
A SPEEA strike would be the sixth against Boeing in the Seattle area in two decades, following earlier walkouts of 28 days in 2005, 69 days in 1995 and 48 days in 1989, all by the Machinists, and 40 days in 2000 by the engineers union.