Contract Rejected by Wide Margin
Boeing engineers and technical workers have rejected the U.S. planemaker's four-year contract offer, union officials said on Friday. The 17,000 members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), Boeing's largest white-collar union, voted decisively against the tentative agreement: engineers voted 64 percent against, while technicians were approximately 72 percent against.
The vote also authorized the negotiating team to declare a strike when the contract expires on October 6. This strike authorization gives the union significant leverage, as a work stoppage would further delay Boeing's certification campaigns for its 737 Max 10 and 777-9 planes, both of which are already several years behind schedule.
Union's Concerns Over Pay and Inflation
The rejection stems largely from dissatisfaction with the wage offer, which included raises tied to inflation capped at 3%, plus individual performance and other company-determined metrics. Several SPEEA members who voted no told Reuters that the cap would nearly guarantee their salaries fall behind inflation. The Consumer Price Index for the Seattle area, where most SPEEA members work, rose 4.5% over the past year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in July.
SPEEA member Katheryn Durkee said members "really want to have careers and not jobs at Boeing," while negotiating team member Kevin Boyd said the strike authorization vote "gives a lot of transparency" and that "the membership has a strong need here, and they're willing to do what it takes to get it."
Company Response and Next Steps
Boeing's Ben Nimmergut, vice president and functional chief engineer for production engineering, said in a statement: "We're disappointed our engineers and technical workforce voted no on our offer. As a result, we are now implementing our strike contingency plan and diverting the dollars we had wanted to invest in our SPEEA-represented team to prepare for a potential strike." He added, "We have no choice but to implement our contingency plan. We have a responsibility to the rest of our workforce and our customers to build on our progress over the last two years and maintain our momentum."
Boeing said its offer would have been the largest wage increase for SPEEA in 40 years. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A union spokesperson said the negotiation team plans to survey members to determine what it would take to approve a four-year contract with Boeing. No new talks are scheduled between the two parties.
Context and History
SPEEA has not negotiated a new contract for its Northwest members since 2012, having approved contract extensions in 2016 and 2020. The union's members last went on strike for 40 days in 2000. In 2024, a strike by 33,000 IAM members halted Boeing's commercial airplane production in Seattle for seven weeks, underscoring the potential impact of a labor dispute.
The negotiating team had endorsed the contract terms, but neither of SPEEA's bargaining unit councils backed the offer. Engineers and technicians negotiate together with Boeing but vote separately. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told Wall Street analysts in July that the company began discussions early "to work towards an agreement that supports our employees and their families, creates greater clarity for our business and helps us stay focused on the progress we're making."
The company had offered better terms than expected, several union members said, but the final vote shows that the rank-and-file still found the offer insufficient.