SPEEA union president: ‘We stand with the machinists,’ ‘We don’t do furloughs’

A labor strike at Boeing showed no signs of ending Friday, as the walkout by 33,000 union machinists entered its eighth day and the company started rolling furloughs of nonunion employees to conserve cash.

Federal mediators joined talks between Boeing and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers this week but company and union officials reported that little progress was made during the first two sessions.

KIRO Newsradio’s Heather Bosch interviewed SPEEA president John Dimas on Friday. SPEEA stands for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace. It is a professional labor union that represents aerospace professionals in the United States, including engineers, technical workers and pilots.

Here is her interview:

Heather Bosch: Boeing machinists are on strike. My understanding is that Boeing, the company, asked the SPEEA union to do something during this walkout. What happened and what was your response?

John Dimas: We had been hearing rumors of possible furloughs, and that was going through the membership and through the workplace. Wednesday we decided that we were going to meet as the executive board to address those rumors and see what we’re going to do and as it would happen, about 5:30 on Wednesday night, we received a request from the company to see if we were interested in in a voluntary furlough program. Our contract doesn’t have it there to have such a program. And they wanted to know if we wanted to participate in that voluntarily and really no negotiations they just kind of sent us the request and were looking for an answer. So we met before our regular meeting last night and talked about it. We came to the decision to say no to furloughs and then we announced it at our regular executive board meeting last night.

Listen to Heather Bosch’s full interview with SPEEA President John Dimas below:

Bosch: Correct me if I’m wrong, but your contract says that you are not allowed to be furloughed.

Dimas: Yes, basically, it says that that we can’t be furloughed. We don’t participate in furloughs.

Bosch: What was Boeing’s response when you said, no, our contract says we don’t do this?

Dimas: Their initial response was they thanked us for a timely response. And I believe that is the only thing that we’ve heard from the company, as of yesterday,

Bosch: How many folks does SPEEA represent now?

Dimas: I think not sure if we have hit 20,000. We are at 19,500 is the latest count.

Bosch: That’s all with specific to Boeing?

Dimas: No, so we can actually represent all aerospace workers now across the country, regardless of just Boeing or traditionally tied to Boeing. So workers that we cover are in Washington, Pacific Northwest, Oregon, a little bit in California, Utah and we have a sizable unit in Wichita, Kansas.

Bosch: Gotcha so Boeing specifically, how many folks do you represent?

Dimas: I would say that’s about about 17,000.

Bosch: I can see Boeing saying, ‘Hey, come on for the good of the company. Take a furlough or two. Take a couple weeks off. You know, why not? Do the company a solid here?’

Dimas: It’s by no coincidence that the machinist strike is going on right now. So we see this as a tactic to undermine our brothers and sisters in the machinists union. And we will not. We stand with the machinists 110% and we support what they’re asking for, for them fighting for a good contract, and that the jobs that are just not paying enough for what the cost of living is, especially in Washington state. But also we have our own negotiations with the Boeing Company in two years, so we’re keeping an eye on that. And, we’re wondering if we’re going to get run across the same resistance. Because quite honestly, this has been the Boeing playbook for at least 2025, years, and it’s still kind of the same playbook, even though these extreme measures with the furloughs and the cuts have been extreme. We’ve never seen the company do anything like this before.

Bosch: Why do you think they’re doing something this extreme? What is your gut as a union man telling you?

Dimas: I don’t know. That’s a good that’s a good question. Honestly, most employees at the Boeing Company, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a machinist, if you’re SPEEA, if you’re some other union, or if you’re non-represented, you care about the airplane because that is a product we built. Where Boeing is the largest exporter in the U.S. and Boeing doesn’t get paid until aircraft are delivered and they’re delivered safely. So, you know, it really puzzles us why? But the number one reason would have to be that they’re trying to force the machinists into an unfavorable contract. At least that’s most of our guess. And what is most of our members guess?

Bosch: I was going to say, you mentioned contracts talks coming up in a couple of years, the machinists, as you know, are saying, hey, our wages have been stagnant. We’ve been giving things back, like we gave up our pension. Are your members feeling like they’re in the same boat in some ways?

Dimas: Yes, in the previous contracts that we voted on, especially with the contract extensions. We lost our pension, the wages have been lower in the last couple of years, and that is actually retirement security and pay are some of the top couple of issues that SPEEA members talk to the leadership about, we hear that a lot. So any which way we can support other unions in making sure they get a good deal, that it just benefits everybody. Those are our values, and that’s what we support. Gotcha with the machinists off the job is their daily work for engineers, yes and it’s going to depend on areas. If you directly support an aircraft, they may reassign you to do some other type of duty. But the bottom line is, Boeing had been understaffed, there is more work to do than they have people to do it, and all of this disruption with the furlough is going to probably put a lot of, I’m going to speculate, a lot of schedule at risk for not just deliveries here in the near future, but also It could affect deliveries in the next year or two.

Bosch: The strike itself seemed to catch Boeing flat-footed. There are some analysts I spoke to that thought, yeah, the company was pretty sure that they were going to accept this contract, we were going to move forward. I’m curious if you as a worker, as a union leader, saw this coming, or whether it took you all by surprise?

Dimas: No, it did not take us by surprise. Until about a year ago, I worked in a job role that I had the opportunity to work with machinists, fixing electrical issues on the 777. And so I know quite a few machinists, and this has been talked about for years, that it has been talked about their pay and about health care and a lot of other benefits that they were just lacking. And especially newer machinists have a hard time with the cost of living. I mean, they can go to fast food or other type of non-manufacturing jobs and get paid the same or, if not, more, instead of building a world-class aircraft. So yeah, I personally have heard this in the workplace, for machinists, so for the company to come out and say that they were shocked or they thought that the offer was going to be enough for the machinists, that I find that very hard to believe.

Bosch: Machinists are also saying just flat out, ‘Hey, we are also striking because we are concerned about quality, about the safety of our products. You know, our company has taken a black eye because it hasn’t been paying enough attention to that.’ Do you believe that is a reason for the strike as well, from what you’re hearing, and is it a concern of the SPEEA union as well?

Dimas: Yes, if you’re a machinist, if you’re SPEEA or if you’re non-represented, I can tell you from almost next year, I’ll be there 20 years, and in that time, people take great pride in being Boeing employees. And you know, a part of us goes into every aircraft that goes out and gets delivered and gets into the flying public. So yeah, they do care very deeply about putting out a good airplane. You know that the Boeing company has a great reputation and the safety of the flying public.

Editor’s Note: This interview was edited for grammar and clarity.

Contributing: The Associated Press; Bill Kaczaraba, MyNorthwest

Heather Bosch is an award-winning anchor and reporter on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of her stories here. Follow Heather on X, or email her here.

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