17,000 Boeing Engineers, Tech Workers Walk Out

About 17,000 Boeing Co. engineers and technical workers walked off the job Wednesday in one of the largest white-collar strikes in U.S. history. It was yet another sign that professionals are increasingly willing to take up traditional blue-collar labor tactics.

The strike, which federal mediators tried to avert with two days of tense negotiations, reflects the high level of frustration by Boeing professionals. The workers said they have watched the company turn record profit and sign a lucrative contract with the International Assn. of Machinists, while asking them for concessions on wages and benefits.

The strike comes at a time when many professionals, from doctors to university teaching assistants, are joining unions to improve their bargaining prospects.

Representing 23,000 engineers, scientists and technical employees, the Seattle Professional Engineering Employees Assn., or SPEEA, has had only one strike in its 52-year history. That 1992 walkout lasted only a day. The union has no strike fund and, until recently, members said they never seriously contemplated a strike.

But several significant developments changed their thinking. Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas two years ago, and union members said the new management has taken a more adversarial approach in contract negotiations.

Also, last fall, SPEEA affiliated with the labor giant AFL-CIO by joining the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, a small but aggressive union. Several members said the affiliation made the union stronger and more willing to take risks.

Meantime, businesses such as Boeing sought to contain costs as part of a larger strategy to increase stock prices. Some union members mentioned the company’s record profit announced in the fourth quarter of last year and said they felt their contributions were not appreciated.

“They used to have high respect and high regard and designs were driven by what was right on an engineering basis,” said SPEEA Executive Director Charles Bofferding. “That’s all different now.”

Boeing officials said their engineering work force enjoys “outstanding compensation” and that the final contract offer would have boosted engineers’ pay from $63,000 currently to about $71,500 in the final year of the deal.

Union members, who rejected the company’s most recent offer in January, said their salaries are 13% below the national average. Aerospace engineers remain among the highest-paid of the nation’s 2 million engineers. But their counterparts in high-technology fields are catching up and, in some cases, surpassing them.

A survey released in September of new college graduates with bachelor’s degrees showed aerospace and aeronautical engineers fetching starting salary offers of $40,662, up only 0.2% from the year before. In contrast, computer engineers received starting offers of $45,666, up 4.1%, according to the survey by the National Assn. of Colleges and Employers.

SPEEA members said they want a deal that comes closer to that won by the International Assn. of Machinists in December, which included a $4,500 signing bonus, cost-of-living increases and step pay raises.

The strike mainly affected Boeing’s operations in Seattle, although strikers were scattered throughout nine states, including California. Most Boeing engineers and technicians in Southern California are represented by a different union and their contract has another year to run.

“We work with them [machinists] and we should be paid comparably, especially since we all have degrees and they’re just turning wrenches,” said Ray Hagan, a flight test technician from Seattle who is temporarily assigned to Long Beach to test and certify the new Boeing 717. Hagan, who has a degree in physics, said that, after nine years at Boeing, he earns $35,000 a year.

Boeing offered technicians such as Hagan guaranteed 2% increases in the first and third year of the contract, with no guaranteed boost in the second year, and an additional 5% possible through merit increases.

Union negotiators recommended that members accept the final contract offer, but it was rejected by about 52% of the engineers and 60% of the technicians.

Boeing said that only 15% to 20% of the union’s 9,000 technicians and 20% to 25% of 13,000 engineers reported to work on Wednesday.