SEATTLE — Boeing avoided an engineers’ strike after more than 17,000 engineers and technicians on Thursday approved a four-year contract offer promising pay increases and other benefits.
The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace concluded its electronic voting at noon.
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The bargaining team had recommended members accept the offer because it guarantees a 34 percent pay increase over four years, including an almost immediate 10 percent increase in October. The deal also improves health care and retirement benefits and adds two vacation days, a new floating leave and three bereavement days.
Alex Phillips is a software security engineer at Boeing in Seattle and he’s fighting for a big pay raise.
“To improve members’ lives and help Boeing do better,” Phillips explained. “There are a lot of things in this contract that I think are stepping stones to making improvements.”
Kevin Boyd works at the Auburn facility as a cutting tool designer and said it is critical that this contract increases base salaries.
“I hope this is a foundation on which we can continue to build a relationship with Boeing,” Boyd added.
The deal means the aerospace company narrowly avoided a shutdown in technical development and regulatory compliance at a time when Boeing is under pressure to improve manufacturing quality and clear its backlog of planes.
“The stakes were really high. The certification of the new Boeing 777 and the (Boeing 737) MAX 10 was kind of on the line. Those programs surely would have been delayed if engineers and technicians had gone on strike,” said Howard Hardee, editor of Leeham News and Analysis. The specialty publishing and consulting firm tracks Boeing’s production challenges, regulatory hurdles and labor relations.
Machinists struck for nearly two months in 2024, hurting the company’s bottom line, crippling business activity in the Puget Sound region and hurting efforts to increase production rates for the 737 MAX program. Hardee said that’s what Boeing wants to avoid happening again in this round of negotiations.
“Overall, (Boeing has) had a winning streak. They got the MAX 7 certified,” Hardee said. “They had a setback regarding the certification of the MAX 10, but I think putting that negotiation process behind them is a really positive development for Boeing, and for those who follow the industry, it can only be a good sign of their continued recovery.”
The company said those final amounts were $11,000 more for professional employees and $8,000 more for technical workers than in its initial offer, which the union rejected in August.
Following the vote to approve the contract offers, Boeing released this statement:
“We are pleased with the outcome of the vote. We look forward to working with our team to support the continued recovery of our business and deliver on our commitments to our customers now and in the future.” – Ben Nimmergut, vice president and chief functional engineer for production engineering
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