By Scott Hamilton
July 19,2026, © Leeham News: Boeing’s opening offer to its engineering and technicians union may come as early as this week, three people with knowledge of the company’s plans tell LNA. The opening offer also could come within two weeks. The situation is fluid, LNA is told.
The current contract with The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) expires on Oct. 6. SPEEA and Boeing entered into discussions last month over non-economic topics. Some topics, like days off, have economic implications, but wages, benefits and retirement topics haven’t been discussed.
SPEEA leadership told its membership about the opening discussions of matters of “interest” as they began. The leadership painted a positive picture of this development and since then.
Boeing also views these early talks positively. The company is hopeful that an agreement can be reached well in advance of the contract’s expiration.
Boeing has contingency plans in place if talks appear to be difficult and the outcome is uncertain. But gearing up activating these plans costs money the company would rather not spend.
An early and successful agreement would be a step in resetting labor relations at Boeing, a goal articulated by CEO Kelly Ortberg when he assumed his position in August 2024. Then, the labor contract with Boeing’s largest union, the IAM 751, was 34 days from expiring. Negotiations were difficult and despite reaching an agreement with 751’s negotiators, the membership rejected the contract in a landslide vote. A 53-day strike followed.
Ortberg was brought into Boeing to turn the company around after the disastrous leaderships of CEOs Dennis Muilenburg, who unsuccessfully dealt with the aftermath of two fatal crashes of the 737 MAX, and David Calhoun, who was supposed to remedy Muilenburg’s leadership. Following the January 2024 door plug blow out on a new 737-9 MAX operated by Alaska Airlines, the CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Stan Deal, resigned, Larry Kellner, the chairman of the board of directors, declared he would not stand for reelection, and Calhoun said he would resign upon the naming of his replacement. Others said Calhoun was pushed out by the board.
Ortberg’s August 2024 assumption of Calhoun’s position came at an awkward time, given the looming expiration of the IAM contract. He had little time to come up to speed and virtually no chance of avoiding a strike. Despite reaching a tentative agreement with the IAM negotiators, Boeing and the IAM leadership badly misjudged the mood of the membership. They were in no mood to accept the offer—described by Boeing and the union leadership as the best agreement ever to be reached. After membership roasted the terms in social media, the union leadership distanced itself from the agreement.
On Sept. 12, the date the contract expired, the membership rejected the agreement and walked off the job at midnight for what would be 53 days.
Boeing was in no position to weather a strike. It had $12bn in cash on the day of the walkout and an unused $10bn line of credit. It quickly burned through the cash. Boeing had to tap the debt and equity markets to raise $24bn. The company eventually agreed to most of the union’s demands.
Boeing subsequently reached an agreement on a small contract with the Teamsters union in Seattle. But a labor contract with Boeing Defense and IAM 837, which represented 3,300 employees, took more than 100 days for approval while workers walked the picket line.
Thus, the contract talks with SPEEA, Boeing’s second largest union, will be a key indicator whether Ortberg’s reset is real or not.
Ortberg’s first meet-and-greet with the SPEEA leadership didn’t occur until February 2025. The lag annoyed the leadership. In fairness to Ortberg, Boeing’s house was on fire (to use a metaphor) when he arrived, and he had a lot of effort to put those fires out to keep the house from burning down.
By February 2026, the executive director of SPEEA, Ray Goforth, expressed optimism but added caution in an interview with LNA.
This story will be updated.
This will be very interesting to see, how this plays out. As we know the top priority of the previous regime (really the last 3-4 regimes) was to crush unions and squeeze every other stakeholder.
So what will the beancounters offer up this time, 1% raise each year like McNerny gave the mechanics 10 years ago?
Government policy is to create 2.5% inflation every year, this is the Federal Reserve target, so any offer less than this is the beancounters saying that they need to take money away from the engineers and give it to the shareholders.
Inflation: the hidden way to transfer wealth from those who don’t have it to those who don’t need it!