Update, Feb 20: SPEEA issued corrected vote totals; see below.
If negotiations fail to reach a contract for the Technical unit and they were to strike, the Professional unit cannot strike but neither can they replaced the Techies. SPEEA says production would come to a halt in the event of a strike.
Original Post:
Here are the results:
18,043 votes cast.
Professional Group
Accept: 5,691 6,483
Reject: 4,810 5,514
Do Authorize Strike: 3,316 6,727
Do Not Authorize Strike, 2,586 5,249
Technical Group
Accept: 2,801 2,868
Reject: 3,014 3,203
Do Authorize Strike: 3,796 3,903
Do Not Authorize Strike: 2,098 2,165
The Tech group will return to the bargaining table in hopes of reaching a new agreement.
…well now what? I kind of figured the engineers would accept, of the people I talked to who were willing to share nobody seemed willing to reject the contract.
Not the best case scenario me think. This is going to leave marks, not good for Boeing.
The vote count of 18,043 votes cast don’t add up with the results.
I am guessing there were two questions on the ballot paper: 1) Do you accept the deal? 2) Do you authorize the strike (in the case of rejection)? About 90% of the ballots answered the first question; about 65% answered the second question: making 18,043 ballots in total.
Thanks FF, that makes sense. It also explains why, in the Professional Group where most voted to accept Boeing’s offer, but those authorizing a strike outnumbered those who don’t want to strike. The Technical Group numbers are a little confusing. It seems that there are more than 1000 who voted to accept the company offer, yet also said they authorized a strike.
It seems to me if someone voted to accept Boeing’s offer, there would be no need at all to vote on the strike question. But if someone voted to reject Boeing’s offer, they would have to vote one way or the other on the strike question
I was a bit surprised about that too. I guess some people who were in favor of the deal would back a strike out of solidarity in the situation where the majority rejected the deal.
It takes a great fool to not authorize the strike, why unilaterally remove a negotiating tool from your chest? Boeing in the past has unilaterally implemented contracts when the union rejected it, but didn’t give the authorization to strike.