Boeing Engineers Pledge Solidarity With Striking Machinists Union

Contract talks began Monday for Boeing’s second-largest union, the Seattle Professional Engineering Employees Association, after leaders of SPEEA and the company’s striking Machinists pledged a united stand.

“Today we’re standing shoulder to shoulder … to ensure that neither union is used against the other,” said Charles Bofferding, executive director of SPEEA, which represents about 21,000 workers - 12,000 engineers and 9,000 technical workers - mostly in the Puget Sound area. About 49 percent of those workers are dues-paying SPEEA members.

“Working together” - Boeing’s in-house slogan - “is more than two words written on an airplane,” said Bill Johnson, president of Machinists Lodge 751 in Seattle.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers represents 32,000 Boeing riveters, painters, crane operators, tool makers and other workers who have been on strike since Oct. 6 over job security, medical benefits and pay.

The two unions have squabbled over representation rights in recent years.

Job security, pensions and health care are important to both unions as well as to Boeing management, Johnson said at the unions’ joint news conference, held a few hours before SPEEA negotiators sat down for their first bargaining session with Boeing on a new three-year contract.

“I think the union would concur that we really do have a mutual goal of trying to be successful in negotiations,” said Boeing spokesman John Kvasnosky. “We want to come up with a fair and equitable contract that works for all the parties involved.”

The union officials stressed Boeing’s strong position in the industry. After years of slumping sales to struggling airlines, the aerospace giant is flourishing now, they said.

From January to July, Boeing received 204 plane orders while its closest competitor, European conglomerate Airbus Industrie, had just 66, said Machinists negotiator Bob Gregory.

Boeing “is not a company on the downslide,” Gregory said.

“We’re concerned that Boeing is too focused on short-term cost-cutting,” Boffering said.

“We believe that long-term productivity is the key to success,” he said, and that the company’s best chance for ensuring that is to treat its workers “with respect and honor.”

Employee morale is “dismal right now,” Boffering said.

The Machinists have not held a bargaining session with Boeing since the walkout, and none is planned until the company improves its offer, Gregory said.

Striking Machinists “are ready for the long haul if that’s what Boeing wants,” he said.

Bofferding said he believes the proposed contract for the Machinists may represent a pattern for Boeing pacts this year, and “we think they went too far.”

Asked whether the unions anticipate linking their positions - that is, whether SPEEA might refuse to sign off on a contract until the Machinists have reached agreement with the company - he said: “Everything’s an option right now.”

The joint news conference was not intended to raise the threat of a joint walkout but to underscore a new commitment to solidarity, he said, adding that union leaders would protect that commitment by talking to each other.

“More and more unions are working together,” Gregory said.

SPEEA members have joined Machinists informally on picket lines, SPEEA spokesman Bill Dugovitch said, and “there was a unified effort in Auburn last Friday where about 200 SPEEA members walked the line with the IAM during their lunch hour.”

SPEEA members staged a one-day walkout in December 1992 after rejecting Boeing’s last three-year contract proposal. The company put the agreement into effect anyway, and union members finally approved the pact in February 1993. There was a subsequent, failed move to shift some SPEEA workers to the Machinists union.