SEATTLE -- Negotiators for SPEEA, the union for aerospace professionals, will begin formal contract talks with Boeing on July 1.
Talks will take place at locations in the Seattle area, with the teams planning to meet regularly until Boeing presents its offers to the two SPEEA bargaining units. The current contracts for the two units expire on Oct. 6.
The union aims to negotiate two collective bargaining agreements, one for some 13,000 engineers and another for some 4,000 technical workers. The majority of those aerospace professionals work at Boeing facilities in Puget Sound, with several hundred more working at Boeing sites in Oregon, California and Utah.
Mike Berryhill, a production systems engineer in Everett who serves on the union’s Negotiation Team said the union negotiators are “optimistic about securing a fair deal for our members,” but added that it won’t be easy.
“These are going to be challenging negotiations, both for Boeing and our union,” he said.
Aerospace professionals frustrated, disillusioned
Berryhill said SPEEA has “two large groups of workers with different sets of issues.”
The union has “a large cadre of frustrated experienced professionals, who for decades warned their managers that if Boeing continued down the path it was on, it would lead to major problems. Now, after the problems have in fact become obvious, Boeing is going back to those same union members they ignored for all those years and asking them to solve all the problems they’d been warned about,” Berryhill said.
“We also represent a large group of young professionals, who have joined Boeing in recent years, thinking they were hiring into a cutting-edge company,” Berryhill said. “They then found out about the culture of putting shareholders above quality and safety, and they’ve become disillusioned, even embarrassed, about the company they work for.”
Berryhill continued: “The challenge for us as a union is to make sure that both groups are represented and heard at the bargaining table.”
On the other hand, “the challenge for Boeing is going to be to work with us in a constructive manner to find ways to address the issues for these groups,” Berryhill added. “Boeing won’t achieve any of its goals – increasing production rates, certifying new aircraft or eventually bringing a new jet to market – without a strong and motivated engineering and technical community, represented by SPEEA.”
Mutual problem solving
Rather than present a list of contract demands, the Negotiation Teams for the two SPEEA bargaining units have prepared a list of contract priorities that must be addressed in the next collective bargaining agreements.
That list includes market-leading compensation, better benefits, more-flexible work arrangements, investments in workforce development and improved workplace fairness.
In preliminary meetings, Boeing executives have expressed a willingness to engage on all items of the union’s bargaining platform, said Berryhill. “In particular, Boeing has agreed that work/life balance, a strong pipeline for technical excellence and a desire to reward and retain talent are key issues that need solutions,” he said.
The SPEEA teams have been meeting internally since March to review data from four member surveys in 2025. The teams have held three informal meetings with Boeing’s negotiators, including one on June 18 where they pressed Boeing executives for insights into how committed the company is to building a future in the Northwest.