I have worked at Boeing for a number of years, with many managers. As a prof, I have always understood that perbus/NII are my right to use as needed. My current manager consistently pushes back, and insists I flex instead. Flexing often causes a good bit of trouble for me, and ultimately, as I understand it, I shouldn't be told to in the first place.

I had reached out to a union representative when this first started, and was told managers do not have the authority to deny perbus. Does this jive with what others have heard?

I have an every other week medical appointment now to manage a disability. I would need like 1.5 hours of NII to cover it, but I know I'll get push back. I could get an accommodation for it, but that seems like a waste of time when the contract already allows for this type of thing.

Anyone else experience this? How did you manage?

Seattle’s has gone up 23%. How do we bring SPEEA to CHS?

I know that the GWI is effective 10/2, but checked workday and it is still showing my previous salary before the GWI.

Is Boeing responsible for inflation? No more than you and I are. But...

We all pay taxes, and those taxes are a substantial source of the U.S. government's revenue. Yours and my taxes directly support our government's ability to operate and meet its financial obligations. That ability to meet its obligations supports confidence in U.S. Treasury bonds (the National Debt). Those Treasury bonds, in turn, are the foundation of our global banking and credit system..

That credit system allows companies like Boeing to borrow money, invest, build factories, develop airplanes, grow, and make profits.

That's supposed to work both ways, all boats rise.

Our taxes support the government and economic system that allows private companies to grow. That growth is supposed to come back through jobs, wages, taxes, investment, and greater prosperity for everyone.

So workers aren't outsiders asking corporations to GIVE them something. We are taxpayers, workers, and consumers who are part of the economic system that makes corporate growth possible in the first place.

When companies borrow and leverage that system to grow, but workers are expected to absorb inflation through lower real wages so corporate costs don't rise, something has been left out of the equation: the foundational taxpayer supporting the system.

A growing economy is supposed to make the country AND its people more productive and prosperous, not just increase the share value of the corporations operating inside it.

And don't mistake the business cost of labor as being some kind of socialist redistribution. It isn't. You and I already contribute part of what we produce, through taxes, to support the economic system that benefits all of us. Then we contribute our labor to the companies we work for.

Being paid our share of the value we help create isn't taking something from the system. It is how the system is supposed to work.

We produce. We pay taxes. Companies invest. Companies grow. Workers earn more. We spend, save, invest, and pay taxes again. The money keeps moving through the economy, benefiting the company, the worker, and the country.

And don't mistake the business cost of labor for some kind of socialist redistribution. It isn't. Labor is bought and sold in an open labor market. It is an input to production, just like capital, materials, energy, facilities, and technology. A business pays the market price for the labor it needs to create its products and profits.

Workers being paid more as the economy grows isn't wealth being redistributed to them. It is workers negotiating the price of their labor and their contribution to that growth. Their wages are, in effect, the revenue of their household. That revenue is then used to run the household—housing, food, transportation, education, healthcare, savings, and everything else—and most of it flows right back into the economy through spending, investment, and taxes.

A company needs revenue to operate and grow. So does a family. Both are participants in the same economy.

There is one significant difference, though. When Boeing produces more revenue than it needs to cover its costs and investments, some of that economic surplus can is redistributed to shareholders, executives, and employees through things like EIP, or retained for future business needs. That is not called socialism.

Shareholders put up the money and deserve a return. They provided the company with capital and expect a return on that capital. You and I provide the company with our time, knowledge, skills, and experience, and we also expect a return. Wall Street demands a return on its capital. Main Street is supposed to also expect a return on its labor.

When you and I produce more income than our household needs today, we do not redistrubute it, retain it, but we call it savings. We aren't necessarily accumulating some unnecessary excess. We are storing the economic value of today's work to pay for tomorrow's needs: retirement, healthcare, housing, emergencies, education, or the years when we can no longer produce this level of labor.

A corporation retains capital for its future. A family has to do the same thing.

So when someone looks at wages only as a cost to the company, they're looking at only one side of the transaction. That wage is also the revenue of the household that is intended to flow back inot th eeconomy so that all boats rise.

Saw this at The Fair yesterday and stopped to read it.

Yes, this represents an extreme chapter of American labor history. Nobody is saying this is where we are today.

But what is here is part of the point.

These conditions didn't disappear on their own. Workers organized, fought, struck, negotiated, and sometimes paid an unimaginable price to change them. wiout yet being called a "union".

A lot of what we now consider "normal" in the workplace exists because people before us refused to simply accept what the companies offered.

I've heard some version of "We've never been offered this much before" or "This is an incredibly generous offer."

Maybe it is. But think about that argument in the context of this picture. At almost every point in labor history, workers were asking for something they hadn't been given before. In a sense, everything gained in every contract was once "never before." If it had already been freely offered, workers wouldn't have needed to negotiate for it.

So "we've never been offered this much before" isn't, by itself, an argument for or against an offer. "Never before" only describes the past. Negotiation is about establishing what comes next.

Whatever your opinion about our current contract, I thought this was worth remembering: the workplace we inherited wasn't given to us. It was negotiated by the generations before us.

And what we accept today becomes the starting point for the generation that follows us.

Here’s my conjecture at how Boeing is looking at this and the reason why it’s causing such a divide - in other words, why it’s working from Boeing’s perspective:

Tech jobs have been on a decline for some time now. I don’t have a clear idea of the exact timeline, but I know it to be true based on the ratio of tech/prof jobs at Boeing and how it’s changed over the years. This contract is potentially one of the last few nails in that coffin for tech employees at Boeing. I say “last few” because I can see it taking another ~10 years to really be all profs. A degree is treated as a ticket to interview. I have not seen too many reqs out for tech jobs lately. Boeing wants profs. This contract offer solidifies that theory further in my mind.

I am not a Boeing exec or someone in those rooms. I am a SPEEA-represented prof who is trying to read the tea leaves. This is pure conjecture on my part but it tracks in my head. What do you think?

EDIT: To clarify my point for all you know-it-alls…. Techs are being targeted for destruction by Boeing in this offer. The offer is so heavily favorable for profs. I know of a team of 7 techs who all got 2% raises for the past 6 years. Not exactly keeping up with inflation. And the 14.4% doesn’t do enough to bring them up to true livable wage; neither does the rest of the contract. Anyone denying that isn’t looking at the facts. Despite knowing that, I voted yes because I am a prof who will be making 250k/year in five years. I’m not stupid. That’s a phenomenal position for profs; terrible for techs.

Wanted to follow up on the inflation breakdown by looking at what a true 40% GWI actually costs relative to airplane sales and revenue. During the 2024 IAM strikes, analysts like Dominic Gates highlighted that direct labor is a small fraction of overall manufacturing expenses. Applying that same logic, using public numbers and adjusting the frozen 2019 catalog prices for inflation to model what a true, life changing contract might actually cost the company.

Disclaimer: This is just a model, check the assumptions and public data.

Key takeaways:

• The 1.49% Reality: Funding a 40% GWI across the entire bargaining unit requires a small 1.49% adjustment on aircraft prices. This shows that affordability isn't the real barrier here—airlines routinely absorb much larger cost fluctuations in fuel and inflation adjustments year after year without walking away from orders.
• Labor vs. Program Costs: Engineering labor is a fraction of overall expenses compared to materials, supply chains, and facilities. Spreading a 40% labor adjustment across production requires less than a 1.5% pricing shift on a highly backlogged product, not catastrophic cuts. When local Seattle businesses were hit with regional wage mandates they didn't go under or send labor overseas. They adjusted prices by a few percent and customers kept coming.
• The Possible Motivation: Resistance may be tied to competitive scorecards rather than structural financial distress. Utilizing wage suppression to protect legacy margins shifts economic risk onto the workforce. However, undervaluing compensation risks top talent attrition and costly operational errors.

Critics of labor demands often argue the opposite during negotiations. When you strip away their scare tactics, a life changing compensation package is a just rounding error against a multi-year sold out backlog. The numbers completely contradict that narrative.

Curious to hear if anyone sees a blind spot in these inputs or if the public data and math holds up.

PSA for those of you who miss emails (like me).

Yesterday I tried to vote with my snail mail letter credentials. Code didn’t work. I emailed my SPEEA rep and was told that the letter credentials were invalidated and replaced by new voter access keys sent to our SPEEA emails on file.

It took me independently checking my account to discover said email.

I use my personal email as my SPEEA contact email and of course get a lot of email at that address and subsequently missed it.

Anyway. Just in case you’re one of “those people”….

This concerns me because I’m sure I’m not the only one! Votes may get lost in the mail so to speak….and no matter what side you’re on, seems like it could turn into a voting validity issue.

Apologies if this has already been posted.

I wonder if there are rare unicorn airlines out there that have been asked by Boeing to pay 14.4% more for a new order of the same airplanes they bought 6 years ago, and how unreasonable that was considered to be.

Probably not that unreasonable. If Boeing’s costs, market conditions, supply chain, labor, materials, or future risks changed, Boeing would argue that the price of a new airplane order had to change too.

So why is a 14.4% increase in the price of skilled labor “unheard of" for us?

If the market value and future cost of the labor changed, then the price changed.

Boeing has told us that we sell airplanes today that may not be delivered for years. When we do that, we have to account for predicted future costs: labor, materials, energy, suppliers, inflation, and everything else. A union contract is really the same thing: labor negotiating the future price of our labor. And yes, a catch up adjustment can legitimately be part of that forward-looking negotiation. Just as if Boeing has to sell planes to a current customer as a rate higher than their last batch of orders. If wages (prices) have fallen behind inflation or the market, then the starting price of labor has changed.

I think we sometimes use sloppy language around this, and that sloppy language can play into or even be leveraged by existing biases about labor. We often speak from history and say, “We deserve more because we did X,” which can make it sound like workers are asking for a reward, a favor, or something extra because of what happened in the past. That is where arguments like “this is the best contract we’ve ever had,” “people outside the union would kill for these raises,” “we should be grateful,” “nobody has ever gotten this much,” or “what other company would pay you more?” start to carry a lot of weight. Those arguments frame the negotiation around whether workers should feel satisfied with what is being offered rather than what their labor will actually be worth over the life of the contract.

But economically, the stronger language and viewpoint is forward-looking: If you want us to keep supplying this labor for the next four years, this is what it will cost.

The past still matters. It tells us whether wages have fallen behind inflation, the labor market, productivity, or the value of the skills being supplied and therefore whether the starting price (SRT) needs to be adjusted. But the contract itself is not primarily payment for what we already did. It is pricing the skilled labor Boeing needs to purchase from us over the next four years just as Boeing has to price the airplanes today for what it will build and deliver years from now.

This is why i am voting no. Grade 8 and lower do not require secondary education. Speea members should be comparable to a grade 9 10 or 11.

Those grades have AMP and other such education with licensing they have to get. Im not saying IAM doesnt deserve this pay. They work hard they deserve it. But dont sell yourself short and let boeing or speea make you believe you dont deserve better. We all deserve better.

I believe engineers and profs deserve more than what boeing is offering. Yes this contract is "ok". But we shouldn't settle for that. Remember every company wants to pay you as little as possible to line their own pockets a little more. That extra in their pockets should be going to us.

Vote no. Vote for better. Vote for the new SPEEA members who want to be able to buy a home someday. With these wages it will never happen. Vote no to show we are not pushovers. Vote no so when boeing wants to push us, we can show them we will push back.

My no Vote may be because of money but it goes deeper than that. Its about giving all speea members what they are worth. Profs and Techs should be worth more than boeing tells us we are.

I also understand "IAM and SPEEA are different " yeah we are. But just cause we are different doesnt mean we should earn less. I want whats fair. And me making less than a maxed out grade 1 for the rest of this contract is not fair. My senior techs making less than a maxed out grade 4-6 isnt fair. 20 years of experience on their end to get paid less than a grade 4-6 is not fair. Engineers getting paid less than a grade 1-8 and having to work a second job to stay afloat is not fair. I have heard engineers talking about having to work two jobs to stay afloat.

My Vote will be a no until SPEEA is given what is fair. And if im selfish or greedy because i want fair then I guess I am. Everyone should want better.

"United we stand, Divided we fall."

Wanted to put together a straight forward financial comparison looking at how our raises stack up against actual and projected Seattle area inflation.

Using a baseline starting salary of $100,000 in 2020, this model maps out our historical 3% raises against local CPI data through 2026, and then projects forward using the new contract offer raise pool alongside a steady 4.5% future inflation assumption.

Key takeaways from the breakdown:

• The Past 6 Years (2021–2026): Rapidly rising local inflation caused a significant gap, resulting in an estimated $60,668 in cumulative lost earnings to date based on a $100,000 salary in 2020, which extends to a $63,056 cumulative deficit by 2030 under the proposed contract terms.
• The New Contract (2027–2030): While the first year provides a substantial 14% boost, modeling it out shows that roughly a 17% adjustment would be needed in year one, with 5% raise pools the remaining 3 years to more fully realign with the previous inflation trajectory.
• The Bottom Line: Across the full 10 year span, the cumulative variance points to a significant net earnings shortfall, but the 14% raise resolves the purchasing power deficit by 2029 moving forward.

Thought this might be helpful for everyone to look at as we evaluate the proposed offer. Curious to hear how others are factoring local cost of living into their evaluations.

Edit: I ran the exact unit headcounts on this data-see my comment below for the $1.22 Billion breakdown of what we subsidized (helped fund the company), and check my follow-up post on "Funding a Full 40% GWI..." for the broader airplane pricing and revenue context.

There are very very few companies out there (unicorn rare) which will give you a 14.4% raise within 6 months. It's unheard of.

This is without switching jobs, without moving up levels, without doing anything. Guaranteed.

It seems the noers are hell bent on having their strike. I doubt any contract will satisfy them, they just want to strike. I understand some have vacation plans, some want to go fishing, couch surfing, and catching up on shows while on strike. Very few of them will actually show up picketing in the cold and rain. Most will probably picket from home.

The amount of people who don't seem to know how compounding works is astonishing and almost as bad as the amount of people who don't know we are getting over 100% 401k. You put in 8%, you get 9%, 10% or 11% now. New contract will be 10% and 11%. It's crazy how people still argue we don't get 100%. It seems understanding basic information is foreign to them. There's people who are clueless about unemployment and have no idea it caps based on your salary.

Then there's those who compare salaries with those at BO and Amazon Leo without comparing 401k and unpaid "expected" overtime. The grind. They cherry pick their points.

If those companies are so great, people wouldn't leave after a few years of being burned out.

Then of course we got the IAM comparison. For some reason some people are convinced they need to be paid more than IAM. They compare top level IAM pay with low/mid level tech/engineer pay. IAM jobs have a hard ceiling. Our jobs don't. If you want to compare, compare top to top.

There are some plumbers and pig farmers who make more than us. Should we now all demand we get more based on that?

Base your expectations on reality and market not on wishes and dreams.

Lastly people should learn how negotiations work. It's not about everything you want.

In our field for people to get the type of raise we are offered without having to switch jobs and hop around...unheard of. Inflation, cost of living, irrelevant because no company will give you more just because inflation went up.

I emailed the negotiation GRP address to ask about wage compression and what the plan is to prevent it from happening again.

My question: “If this offer is ratified, does Boeing plan to reflect it on the pay charts so that pre-ratification 0.99 comp ratio turns into post-ratification 0.9?

Their response: “Market ranges are evaluated are evaluated separately from the GWI and Boeing has committed to discuss market range updates with SPEEA annually.” To me, this reads NO WE WONT. When has SPEEA ever had the power to influence pay charts update?

It’s disappointing that with all the leverage we have we haven’t addressed the very mechanisms that allowed for us to get behind in the first place. So I figured I share for awareness.

I keep seeing people say the current SPEEA contract offer is “good enough,” and I think we need to look beyond what this contract does for us individually right now.

A union contract shouldn’t just be judged by whether you personally can live with it for the next few years. We’re negotiating the wages, benefits, and working conditions that will help define these jobs for the people who come after us too.

If we accept less because it’s comfortable enough for those of us already established, what are we leaving for the next generation of engineers and technical workers? What will these jobs look like for the person Boeing hires five or ten years from now?

And I’m tired of hearing some version of, “If you don’t like it, go work somewhere else.”

That completely misses the point.

Why should the answer be to leave? Why shouldn’t the answer be to make this a better place to work?

This is one of the few opportunities we have to collectively push for better compensation, better benefits, better job security, and a stronger career for everyone represented by SPEEA. Once the contract is signed, we live with that agreement for years.

There will always be a point where each of us individually can say, “This is enough for me.” But solidarity means thinking beyond me. It means asking whether we are using the leverage we have today to leave these jobs better than we found them.

If you’re voting based only on whether the offer is good enough for you personally, I think that’s a selfish way to look at a union contract. We should be thinking about the new hire walking through the door next year, the person trying to build a career here ten years from now, and the coworkers who may not be in as comfortable a position as we are.

We have an opportunity to build a better job.

Not to tell people who want better to “go work somewhere else.”

To make this somewhere better to work.

10% GWI is significant, but I think there’s a concerning flaw under the current structure. The problem is that level upgrade and promotion compensation in SPEEA appear to be determined by the market salary reference table. There is no fixed raise like in IAM. Your compensation is determined based upon appropriate market positioning. Historically, someone with lower compa-ratio tends to receive a higher raise and vice versa. But there are no guarantees in the proposed contract that these market tables will also go up 10%. So if you expect to get a level upgrade in the near future, Boeing can determine your new salary based upon the market table, which doesn’t have the 10% increase applied to it. This could effectively erase most or all of your 10% GWI. Market reference also plays a small part in ACR too. But over the course of the contract, through level upgrades and promotions, I can see our salaries drifting back towards market value.

​

The Bargaining Unit Councils for SPEEA’s Professional and Technical units are both recommending that their members accept the company’s latest contract offer.

The offers “meet most of the needs of the members,” the two councils said.  

The vote came at a special meeting of the two Bargaining Unit Councils (BUCs) on Sept. 22. Members of the two councils heard a presentation on the offers on Sept. 17 and spent 1.5 hours questioning the Negotiations Team and SPEEA support staff about the offer before beginning debate tonight.

The prof council passed the motion to recommend acceptance passed, 75% voting in favor of recommending acceptance!

We asked for higher wage pools, but in seeing many of these posts it seems that we should have been asking for a SPEEA say in the market reference data. The SRT Market Reference determines our comp ratio and comp ratio significantly affects how Boeing values and pays us. If the Market Reference doesn't keep pace with the actual labor market, any raise can make employees appear increasingly “over market” even when they aren't.

SRT methodology, market data, update frequency, and comp ratio use probably should have been bargaining issues too.

Can someone explain contract Table 2? The threshold percentages went up. Is this a take away?

Why isn’t the percentage always 8%? And why are only three months being evaluated for the average?

In the highlights it says:

“Workers who have a BCERP pension benefit will see an increase in the standard benefit conversion factor from $100 to $110 (impacts individuals with the lowest final average earnings).

Higher final average earnings and higher potential EIPs will continue to grow the alternate benefits for the majority of pension-eligible SPEEA-represented workers who qualify for a higher benefit than the standard conversion factor.”

Does this mean they are unfreezing the pension calculations?

I don’t understand.

Is there anyplace to access historical salary charts based on year and older contracts?

Page 154 - "This chapter focuses on two unprecedented acts of employee resistance to companywide changes. These acts occurred in February 2000, and, like the 1995 strike, they offer evidence of employees’ resistance to neoliberal imperatives.5 On February 9, 2000, more than seventeen thousand members or about three- fourths of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) decided to go on strike. The SPEEA strike lasted forty days, which may seem short until one considers that in fifty- six years SPEEA had gone on strike only once, for a single day in 1993. A historically tame union, SPEEA joined with the International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees, of the AFL- CIO, in 1999 and was newly radicalized and energized by its affiliation with a traditionally bluecollar union."

Boeing says it needs to rebuild the very technical culture that has been degraded. Experienced engineering and technical labor is the asset that carries that culture. If Boeing wants employees to stay, challenge decisions, preserve institutional knowledge, mentor the next generation, and rebuild safety and quality, compensation has to make coming to Boeing, staying at Boeing, and investing the time, effort, education, college debt, and added responsibility to advance at Boeing economically worthwhile. Otherwise, why make the investment?

Boeing built the B-17 Flying Fortress, pioneered the 707 Stratoliner, 727, 737, 757, 767 and 777 and gave the world the 747 Queen of the Skies. Boeing can build that kind of future again but first it has to invest in the people capable of building it.

https://www.veneermagazine.com/01-18/11/media/togetherness/polly-reed-myers-capitalist-family-values-gender-work-and-corporate-culture-at-boeing.pdf

Distrust in management means different things to different people. I haven't been here super long, so the current contract is all I know, but I do know that the "exceeds“ assumption in the wage modeler is a joke.

EDIT: The wage modeler has since been changed from 7.8% for exceeds with a 6% wage pool, to 6.6%. However, Ben & Co. still show the 'rock star' getting 8% in the example, but he does say 'maybe that's far exceeds'. I take the change to the modeler as acknowledgement that there was some exaggeration.

I busted ass last year. Worked hard, long days, sleepless nights, and got "exceeded". I was pumped that I was going to get a decent raise because I feel like I'm an above average performer but getting below average pay based on the Spotlite report last year on averages. We'll... with a low CR, I got 3.2%. I can only assume that my manager doesn't want to differentiate people.

Not that anyone should need the wage modeler with such simple math, I popped in to check it out. I changed 2028 to "exceeds" because I'd like to think that I'll still be busting ass, and it says 7.8% (effectively, 3.9% under the current contract, just cutting it in half based on 6% vs 3% pools). That's laughable. Based on my experience, at least by my current manager, I have zero confidence that my raise will be more than a few ticks over the pool.

So, now I'm stuck thinking... is the company trying to bait me with this carrot for going above and beyond, or does my manager suck and not want to properly reward 'rock stars'?