Boeing makes new contract offer in SPEAA dispute

Boeing says it has made a new contract offer in an effort to end the stalemate with engineers and technical employees.

The company says its new proposal to SPEEA members would increase salary pools for professional workers by five percent for the first two years of the contract and four percent the final two years.

Technical workers would see the salary pool increase four percent for the duration of the contract, with an additional one percent lump sum payment in the first two years of the deal.

In a letter to employees, the company writes “under this revised offer, profs would average $85,600 in additional pay and performance-based incentive payments (EIP) over the life of the agreement. Techs would average $61,200 in additional pay and incentive payments.”

The company says it did not change its proposals for health care and retirement from previous offers.

The union has vehemently opposed Boeing proposals to replace the existing pension plan with a 401K retirement system for new hires, and changes to the company health insurance that would require union members pay a percentage of the costs for the first time.

Talks between the two sides resumed Wednesday at a SeaTac hotel, but a union spokesman said the two sides remain “far apart on major contract issues.”

“Our goal is to get a contract that respects the contributions engineers and technical workers had in creating the record profits and 4,200 airplane backlog Boeing has today,” said Ray Goforth, SPEEA executive director, in a statement.

Contracts for SPEEA’s 15,550 engineers and 7,400 technical workers expired in November. The union has begun training members and preparing for a possible strike.

“Throughout these negotiations, our goal has remained the same — a market-leading contract that rewards employees while keeping the company and workforce competitive for future work,” said the letter signed by Boeing’s negotiations team to employees.

“We’ve worked to resolve our differences with the SPEEA negotiations team, withdrawing many proposals that were important to the company. Since our initial offer back in September, we’ve shown considerable movement by increasing our salary proposal twice and revising our medical proposal to lower paycheck contributions,” it said.

In a statement, the union criticizes the company for what it says is a refusal to provide a complete proposal, arguing Boeing claimed it needed four days to provide a formal document electronically.

“It was profoundly disappointing that Boeing corporate yet again gave us mere pieces of an offer and refused to provide it electronically” said Ryan Rule, Professional Team member in a statement. “As members may recall, we found numerous take-a ways in the last company offer which they hadn’t bothered to flag as changes. This incoherence in corporate contract configuration control is baffling.”