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Engineers’ vote concerns Boeing

Possible strike could hobble 787 overhauls

The Columbian
Published: February 2, 2013, 4:00pm

Just when Boeing really needs its engineers, they’re voting on whether to strike.

It’s bad timing for Boeing. The aircraft maker is working around the clock to solve battery problems that have grounded its 787s around the world, and unionized engineers are a big part of that.

The vote begins Tuesday and runs through Feb. 19. The union recommends that its members reject Boeing’s contract proposal, hoping the company offers something better.

The strike threat is growing just as Boeing is dealing with a host of other problems. It must mollify airlines frustrated about buying $200 million planes they can’t fly, and it needs to fix the battery problem. U.S. regulators have launched an open-ended review of the 787’s design and construction. And Boeing needs to speed production of the 787 and other planes.

Last month, a battery caught fire on a parked 787 in Boston. The next week, another 787 made an emergency landing in Japan after another battery problem. All 50 787s that Boeing had delivered so far are grounded until the issue is solved.

Boeing has said that fixing the 787 has its full effort.

The effort includes hundreds of members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, the union’s executive director, Ray Goforth, said Wednesday. The union represents some 23,000 Boeing workers.

Jim McNerney, Boeing Co.’s chairman and CEO, was asked Wednesday whether a SPEEA strike would affect the investigation into the batteries.

“I think we’re going to have enough experts available to keep looking at this issue if it goes that far,” he said.

Goforth said the grounding “shifted a lot of leverage to us.” But workers wanted to keep things simple and not take advantage of Boeing’s situation, he said, so they dropped the improvements they had been seeking in favor of extending the contract.

Boeing’s counter-offer — the one the union will vote on — mostly does that. However, Boeing wants to drop traditional pensions for future hires, replacing them with 401k plans. Boeing also declined to make two changes that SPEEA wanted that it said would help preserve current retirement benefits. The union sees those as major give-backs that mean the offer should be rejected.

Boeing calls the proposed contract its “best and final offer.”

The engineers and technical workers in SPEEA work on plans for new planes, as well as solving problems that arise on the factory floor. When a hole gets drilled a millimeter off, or a part is a little too big or too small, a SPEEA member figures out the fix.

Three plants

The union believes a strike would shut down Boeing production lines in Everett, where its big planes are made, as well as Renton, where it cranks out more than one of its widely-used 737s every day. The factory-floor assembly work is done by the members of the International Association of Machinists.

Goforth believes a strike would also shut down Boeing’s new, nonunion plant in North Charleston, S.C., which makes 787s in addition to those assembled in Everett. That’s because much of the engineering work on the South Carolina planes is done by SPEEA members in Washington, or who are flown to South Carolina on assignment, he said.

Boeing isn’t saying whether it would keep the plants running through a strike, but it has contingency plans. “We of course don’t want a strike,” spokesman Doug Alder Jr. said.

Labor strife has impacted the 787 before. The Machinists walked out in 2008, contributing to a three-and-a-half year delay in delivering the first 787. It was also one factor in Boeing’s opening the plant in South Carolina, where laws make it more difficult to unionize.

The Machinists approved a new, four-year contract in December 2011. Wall Street welcomed the labor peace, and Boeing shares jumped 12 percent in the month after the deal was announced.

Boeing has posted a profit of about $4 billion each in 2011 and 2012. In December it said it would boost its dividend to shareholders.

“Boeing’s big problem, of course, is that it’s doing well” and union members want to be rewarded, said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University.

Still, Chaison thinks a strike will be avoided. The retiree benefits they’re fighting over can be negotiated, he said. And, with all the company’s other issues right now, “Boeing wants this off the table.”

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