THERE’S BEEN A LOT of jawing about how successful the recently settled engineers’ strike was at Boeing. The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have wrapped up the whole matter with a giant smiley face, noting how good it is to see thousands of workers back on the job so that Boeing can get back to the business of building planes. The New York Times went so far as to call the affair a victory for unions, who for years have tried to draw white-collar workers into the fray.
A closer look, however, reveals that many strikers are dissatisfied with the new contract hammered out between the union and Boeing, and think more could have been gained by turning down the proposal, which did little more than maintain the medical benefits Boeing tried to take away. “I know we had them against the wall,” swears David Chapman, a veteran technical designer, who voted against the contract on March 19. “We had them on the wall. It would have only been another week.” Chapman is especially disappointed that his union folded, because he gave up so much during the fight: “I busted my butt,” he says, to make ends meet while honoring the picket line. Chapman, who normally studies the ceiling panels on 757s, dug ditches and waited tables to support himself.
Chapman’s disappointment makes sense in another way. He’s part of a group of workers who are better known for desk-jockey paunches, cocktail-party ineptitude, and geeky self-absorption than for organized labor movements. Lacking experience with strikes, they may have had unrealistic expectations.
The conflict started back in November, when Boeing’s contract offer included a provision that would have forced engineers to pay a portion of their medical insurance dues. That contract offer was soundly defeated, when 99 percent of union members voted no. (Boeing engineers belong to the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace [SPEEA].) What followed led to the 40-day strike: Boeing made three more contract offers, one of which the union didn’t even offer for a vote because it was so regressive. Union members walked off the job on February 9.
The strike did lead to a few gains. Boeing’s engineers and technical workers will receive a guaranteed wage increase of three percent per year for three years, with some earning even higher increases based on merit. And, if engineers and technical workers help Boeing meet key production deadlines, each striker will receive a $2,500 bonus. The company made this offer on March 17, and it was approved two days later.
But the “overwhelming” approval that Boeing engineers and technical workers gave to this contract offer is deceiving. A two-to-one vote in the affirmative still means one third of the strikers rejected it. Plus, because the vote took place with short notice on a Sunday (SPEEA usually allows a couple of weeks for discussion before a vote), almost 4,000 dues-paying members — one-third of eligible voters — didn’t participate. One union member said he didn’t even know a vote had taken place until he saw on the evening news that he’d have to return to work the next day.
Those who voted no are adamant about their beefs. Some complain that the meager increase Boeing agreed to doesn’t even begin to make up for the huge lag in wages at the company over the years. “The three-percent guaranteed raise still does not bring my salary up to the market average,” complains Reese Dengler, a 16-year veteran engineer. “I’m [even] below what they say is the Boeing average.” Another engineer, Linda Gilmore, who served on SPEEA’s negotiating team, says she’s impressed by the show of unity among the thousands of engineers and technicians who struck, and by some of the concessions they won. But the new contract, she admits, is little more than a retaining wall, slowing an overall erosion of wages and benefits. “You can’t count it as a big gain [for workers],” Gilmore says. “But it was a big gain to maintain what we had.”
Still, union activists like SPEEA spokesman Bill Dugovich count the contract as a success. He says the strike shows Boeing that the engineers and technical workers are serious about their demands. “[The SPEEA] strike gives legitimacy to any strike threat in the future,” Dugovich says. “The benefits from this strike will continue for contracts to come.” We’ll see whether that’s true in 2003, when contract negotiating time rolls around again.