Boeing seems determined to sink itself:

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Main table negotiations for new, three-year, contracts covering 20,300 engineers and technical workers at The Boeing Company start Tuesday (Oct. 28), in SeaTac.

Negotiations between the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), IFPTE Local 2001, and Boeing start after eight months of disappointing preliminary talks. The first meaningful discussion only recently took place, according to SPEEA Executive Director Ray Goforth. Union leaders started advising members in May to save money for a possible strike.

“Early indications are that these will be very difficult negotiations,” Goforth said. “Engineers and technical workers are the life’s blood of Boeing, but the current regime at corporate headquarters treats them as mere vendors selling a service to Chicago. This disrespect has to end.”

Talks involve two contracts. The first covers 13,390 engineers and a second contract for 6,889 technical workers. While the majority of workers work in the Puget Sound region, the contracts cover some employees in Oregon, Utah and California. Both contracts expire Dec. 1.

Negotiations for 700 engineers at Boeing Wichita start Nov. 13. The Wichita contract expires Dec. 5.

Boeing remains determined to change SPEEA contracts in several areas. Among the changes are fragmenting the union into small pieces, eliminating the defined benefit pension for new employees, shifting healthcare costs onto employees and accelerating the outsourcing of engineering and design work to suppliers, contractors and overseas companies.

Based on Boeing’s own data, many SPEEA-represented employees need significant pay increases to reach average wages in the aerospace industry. Union officials said for Boeing to remain a market-leading company, it must pay industry leading wages. Other contract improvements proposed by SPEEA include a meaningful cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA), increasing vacation to industry standards, bereavement pay when a close relative dies and for Boeing to follow Airbus North America and honor Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday.

“Everybody wins if we get a good contract,” said Dave Patzwald, chair of the Professional Negotiating Team. “We’re hopeful. We’ll know soon.”

Boeing remains an island of success in the economy with $7.5 billion in cash reserves. On Wednesday (Oct. 22), the commercial airplanes division announced third quarter profits of $694 million. Profits on the defense side were $845 million, up 4% from the same quarter last year. Total order backlog is $349 billion.

I've said this before and I'm gonna say it again, INDIVIDUAL CONTRACTS WEAKEN THE BARGAINING POSITION OF WORKERS. Boeing is interested in "fragmenting the union into small pieces" because doing so means that SPEEA is in line with the crap the UAW has carved out over the past few years. How'd that work for GM, Chrysler, Ford and the UAW in the end? Not well for any of them.

Need more on what's going on for IAM right now, head over to the IAM site for more. They are keeping the site updated at least daily.

Strike Update - October 26, 2008

Contract talks continued late into the evening Sunday and will resume first thing Monday morning. No details will be released until this latest round of contract talks have concluded.

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There's movement at AAM, but it doesn't really seem that good. There appears to be a framework to create local agreements:

from Freep:

More than two months into the UAW's strike at American Axle & Manufacturing, it appears that the two sides have pulled together a potential framework for a settlement, which likely will include buyouts, buy-downs in exchange for lower wages and the closure of at least two plants.

A settlement potentially would shed American Axle's national UAW contract, replacing it with individual agreements for the surviving plants, said people briefed on the talks.

Local agreements are the equivalent of a million paper cuts to the overall health of a union

Due to the local contracts that discuss the specifics of jobs and skills, we now have the potential of bigger issues to resolve. The new GM contract from the summer seems to have created greater issues for the locals in that they must now bargain on their own with GM in relation to what is considered "skilled" More from the Plain Dealer:

The bigger issue in November was skilled trades. At the time, Boneta said the company wanted to consolidate several job titles, eliminating positions for some of the plant's highest-paid workers.

Instead of having machine repair, millwright, tinsmith, pipe fitter and maintenance welder positions, GM asked for one position called maintenance, Boneta said in November.

Today, he declined to say what issues remained between the union and the company.

The loss of multiple skilled trades categories could mean demoting skilled tradesmen to the production line or cutting jobs.

And there's still more from Freep:

A settlement could include buy-downs -- which are lump sums of money offered in exchange for lower wages -- of $90,000 over three years and buyouts of $140,000 over two years. Wages at the company's U.S. axle operations are shaping up to be $17 an hour for production workers, $14 an hour for nonproduction workers and $25.50 for skilled trades workers...

>snip<

Before the strike, workers at American Axle were making about $28 an hour, and skilled workers were making more than $30 an hour.

There also is the potential for an 8% match on 401(k) contributions.

Forging plants in Detroit and Tonawanda, N.Y., near Buffalo are negotiating deals that would close those factories, according to people familiar with the talks. It is unclear what would be offered to those workers in the event of a closure.

AH- more stupid local agreements. Wonder if AAM strikers will like this agreement or maybe they'll look at it the same way Parma GM workers did...they rejected it

UAW Parma local REJECTED their contract

Workers in Parma rejected a new local contract earlier this month. UAW Local 1005 President Tito Boneta, in a letter to his members, said voter turnout was less than 50 percent for that rejection, so the union's leadership is putting the tentative pact up for a new vote Wednesday.

Okay, so for me, this is the money quote:

That the four plants involved in the strike would have their own deals is a move that makes American Axle's labor contract more like those at other suppliers, which negotiate their terms on a plant-by-plant basis.

Dick Dauch's been pushing for "more like Delphi" and other similar screw the worker agreements forged between Bankrupt corporations and their workers. This of course is where trade kills the American worker.

It's not worker against worker as some on this site have claimed, it's really corporations against countries. Trade has everything to do with Environmental standards, labor laws, labor costs, benefits, safety rules, even the tax rate of these countries.

Trade isn't as simple as labor costs, it's much bigger and much worse than that.

We have an inability to force other countries to bring up their standards and when we can get them to raise their standards, we forge ahead and lower ours. Weeklytoll provides a toll that this has on work place safety

So, theUAW is going to bend over backwards and tell Dick to take whatever he really wants. So, how has this served the membership? I'm not feeling like this has served the membership, especially today of all days, May Day.

What the Fuck is the UAW thinking? In fact, I'm wondering if they're thinking at all, and I don't just mean the national here, I mean the freaking locals, too. WTF?

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UPDATE 4/29/08

Well, while trolling around the tubes I found this little diddy about Mansfield's operations threatening a strike against GM

UAW Local 549 in Mansfield had threatened to strike this week if it did not have a new local contract. Local contracts deal with work rules and shift preferences while national contracts set wages and health care benefits.

...and at the end, they mention that the UAW Parma local REJECTED their contract:

Workers in Parma rejected a new local contract earlier this month. UAW Local 1005 President Tito Boneta, in a letter to his members, said voter turnout was less than 50 percent for that rejection, so the union's leadership is putting the tentative pact up for a new vote Wednesday.

Original story:
From UAW local 1005

The Latest News...

To All UAW Local 1005 Members


RATIFICATION MEETINGS
FOR LOCAL AGREEMENT
At the Local Union Hall
5615 Chevrolet Blvd.

FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2008
6:30 A.M. - 3RD SHIFT
12:00 NOON - 2ND SHIFT
3:00 P.M. - 1ST SHIFT

VOTING FOR LOCAL AGREEMENT
WILL BE ON
FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2008
FROM 6:00 A.M. TO 8:00 P.M.
(14 continuous hours)
Tito Boneta
TITO BONETA PRESIDENT
LOCAL 1005, UAW Dan Smith
DAN SMITH, SHOP CHAIRMAN
LOCAL 1005, UAW



2007 Local Agreement Highlights

A Tentative Local Agreement was reached on April 8, 2008 at 8:00 P.M. by your Shop Committee, Health and Safety Representatives and our National and Regional Union Representatives, Mark Kelly and John Mohan.

Some of the highlights of the New 2007 Local Agreement are as follows:

All non skilled members will be paid equally the top rate “technician rate.”

Full utilization agreement in the Local Agreement for the Skilled Trades.

No combination of Skilled Trades classifications!

No infringements on #182 agreements!

Seniority Agreement split into two groups:
One section is specifically for the Technician classifications.
One section specifically for Skilled Trades classifications.

Five new team agreements.

Enhanced language pertaining to: Layoff and Recall procedure, Seniority Agreement, Team Preference, Shift Preference, Paragraph 71, Local Memorandum of Understandings, Language on Independence and Vacation weeks and Shutdown period, Model Change or Complex Rearrangement, Temporary layoffs, and Transfers.

I still lean toward the opinion that local agreements weaken the barganing position of the union, but I'm still celebrating the contract. Hopefully, it's a good one.

And, on a side note, the hall that's pictured on the local's site is where my cousin's wedding reception was held, ages ago. It's kind of cool to see it on the site.

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