Boeing and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), IFPTE Local 2001, today announced the 2019 Salary Adjustment Funds for employees in the union’s Professional and Technical bargaining units.

After reviewing the adjustment pools resulting from agreed upon data, SPEEA and Boeing agreed to look beyond the contractually mandated data sources. Several additional sources were reviewed, culminating in agreed upon salary pools of 2.8% for engineers and 1.0% for Technical Unit members.  This results in lump sum payments of 2.2% for all employees in the Professional Unit and a 4.0% lump sum for all employees in the Technical Unit.

The salary pools meet the contractual requirement to keep Professional Unit members at or above 115% of the market and Technical Unit members at or above 120% of the market.

Based solely on the market comparison outlined in the Professional and Technical contracts, the Salary Adjustment Fund for each group would have been 0%.

“As in years past, the salary fund for 2019 will allow us to recognize the importance of the contributions made each day by our engineering and technical employees,” said Todd Zarfos, vice president of Engineering Functions, Washington Design Center and senior chief Engineer of Systems.  Zarfos added, “We have established these funds despite the results of the market data analysis.  We recognize the need to look at the agreed upon formula for determining salary funds and whether any adjustments might be appropriate. We believe the announced salary funds achieve the appropriate balance for our employees and the company.”  

“When we last negotiated, we agreed to contracts that provide rates of pay above the market and Boeing has worked with us to assure compliance with the letter and intent of our negotiations,” said Ray Goforth, SPEEA executive director.  “However, we would like to engage with Boeing on why the market data is yielding results neither SPEEA nor Boeing anticipated and see if we can make adjustments to assure our mutual intent is met.”

Boeing and SPEEA negotiated the contracts for engineers and technical workers in February 2016. The contracts include a provision that Salary Adjustment Funds are established from a pool of money of 5.0%. The pool is then divided into two types of funds, one for salary adjustments, and one for lump sums.

The size of the Salary Adjustment Fund is then determined by comparing the average salary of Boeing’s employees in those units to the average salary of comparable employees in the market, with the annual Mercer-SIRS High Tech Company salary survey providing the standard.

Thresholds for the Salary Adjustment Funds allow average wages 15% above market for engineers and 20% above market for technical workers in 2019. SPEEA and Boeing representatives reviewed the Mercer data as well as data from other sources to help assure the intent of the agreement and the needs of the parties are met. These efforts will continue.

More information for affected employees is available from managers, union representatives, and Human Resources representatives.