SPEEA Technical and Professional Employees Approve Four-Year Contracts with Boeing

SEATTLE --- With one of the largest ballot returns in union history, engineers and technical workers approved new four-year contracts with The Boeing Company. The agreements took effect at midnight and run to Oct. 6, 2012.>> At stake were contracts covering nearly 20,400 engineers and technical workers represented by the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), IFPTE Local 2001. Votes were counted Monday (Dec. 1), at union headquarters in Seattle.>> The final tally in the mail-in vote showed 69 percent of the voting employees in the SPEEA Technical Unit approved their contract offer with 3,429 voting to accept and 1,554 voting to reject. In the separate Professional Unit, 79 percent approved the offers with 7,184 voting to accept the offer and 1,951 voting to reject. Union negotiation teams recommended members approve the offers. Nearly 74 percent of the eligible members voted on the contracts. In 2005, just 65 percent of the members voted. Complete voting numbers are posted to the SPEEA website at www.speea.org.>> Passage of these contracts represents a first step in restoring the relationship between Boeing management and its engineering and technical workforce, said SPEEA Executive Director and Chief Spokesperson Ray Goforth. We have a lot of work to breathe life into the text of these agreements and we still need to finish negotiations in Wichita.>> The new contracts provide employees wage increases, benefit improvements, a voice in future decisions on outsourcing and a process to take a voluntary layoff with benefits. The union spent more than eight months negotiating the offers with Boeing. Final main table negotiations started Oct. 29.