The chance of an engineers’ strike comes after Boeing machinists walked off the job in 2024 and 2025.
Boeing faces increased risk of fresh labour disruption after members of an engineering union last week voted down a proposed four-year employment deal, leaving the parties without a defined path forward.
Members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) last week rejected a Boeing contract offer that would have provided unionised workers with a total 28.5% wage jump.
The rejection came despite the union’s negotiating teams in late July having endorsed Boeing’s proposal.
With that deal now scuttled, the union is seeking more feedback from members, Boeing has hauled back some previously offered contract provisions and is preparing a strike-mitigation plan, and neither party has immediate plans to return to the negotiating table.
SPEEA represents some 17,000 Boeing workers on the US West Coast under two groups: a 13,000-strong “professional” unit of engineers and scientists, plus a 4,000-member “technical” group of technicians, analysts and planners. Both groups work under contracts that expire after 6 October.
“Our negotiation team currently is surveying our members to determine exactly what improvements they will need to see in order to approve a contract with Boeing,” SPEEA tells FlightGlobal.
Boeing says a strike can not happen until 7 October at the earliest.
“We gave a strong contract offer to position our employees among the market leaders in pay and benefits in the Pacific Northwest. We’re disappointed our engineers and technical workforce voted no on our offer,” says Boeing functional chief engineer for production engineering Ben Nimmergut.
The company is now implementing a “strike contingency plan” and has retracted some provisions in its initial proposal.
Provisions “no longer available” include making a 3% pay bump retroactive from February and a 2 percentage point increase in incentive pay, Boeing says, adding it will instead spend that money “to prepare for a potential strike”.
“There are no changes to our delivery schedule. We continue to support and deliver for our customers,” Boeing adds. “Our plan will ensure we meet as many customer commitments as possible.”
The deadlock seems to leave Boeing in a familiar position. The company has muddled through two major strikes in recent years, both involving members of its International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) union.
The St Louis-area IAM group that represents some 3,200 Boeing workers struck for three months in 2025 before ratifying a new five-year contract in November that provided 24% wage gains.
One year earlier, IAM members in the Pacific Northwest ended a 53-day strike after approving a four-year contract providing roughly 40% wage gains.
Boeing seeks to draw contrast between the starting position of SPEEA’s members and that of IAM members in the Pacific Northwest.
“The IAM had been locked into a long contract where they saw only 8% growth over the course of a decade,” Boeing says. “During the same timeframe, SPEEA [members] saw their wages grow more than four times faster than” IAM’s members.
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