Boeing, machinists 'far apart' as talks head to wire

SEATTLE -- Days before a contract between Boeing Co. and the machinists union is to expire, labor leaders said the two sides remain far apart and warned of a possible strike.

Seattle-based Machinists Lodge 751 yesterday countered the aerospace company's latest contract offer with their own proposal, but the union declined to provide details.

The latest Boeing proposal, submitted late Sunday, would boost cash bonuses by at least $1,500, but machinists union leaders representing 18,400 production workers say it missed the point -- pensions.

''The important thing is that we're still negotiating. We're still discussing the issues," Boeing spokesman Charles Bickers said.

Bickers had characterized those changes, which carry an immediate price tag of at least $27.2 million, as ''a substantial improvement."

Machinists spokeswoman Connie Kelliher said the two sides remained ''far apart" and dismissed the company's three-year offer as a ''minimal" advance.

''The company's latest offer showed no substantial improvements on our top three issues, which are pensions, healthcare and job security," Kelliher said.

Workers represented in the talks now receive an average of $59,000 a year. No general pay increase has been offered, but Boeing estimates that cost-of-living provisions would boost base wages by about 1 percent in each year of the contract.

She said Boeing's latest offer made no changes in job security or pension provisions. Boeing has offered to boost pension contributions by less than the amount they were raised in the last contract. That agreement was reached in the year following the 2001 terrorist attacks, when the company was reeling from the worldwide economic and airline slump.

The three-year contract with Boeing's biggest union, which represents mostly hourly workers who assemble passenger and cargo jets and build components for those aircraft in the Seattle area, Wichita, Kan., and Gresham, Ore., expires Friday.

Under a negotiating timetable cited by both sides, Boeing's final offer is due today.

The release and discussion of proposed Boeing contract terms is a marked departure from the past, when details were withheld until the final proposal was submitted to a union membership vote. On Friday the company released details of a revised offer, complaining that its first offer had been leaked and misrepresented.

The biggest apparent change in the latest offer was in bonuses: $4,500 on ratification plus a new $1,000 payment in March ''recognizing employees' contributions to Boeing's performance this year." That's $1,500 more than Boeing's previous offer of a $2,000 ratification bonus and $2,000 in cash the first year of the contract.

The statement said the second bonus amounted to a ''jump start" on an earlier incentive pay offer that would provide five days of pay to Seattle-area and Gresham workers if the company meets financial targets and up to 15 days' worth if the targets are exceeded.

Workers also could put all or some of their ratification bonuses into their voluntary investment plans -- a Boeing version of 401(k) plans -- and the company would match 50 percent of the first $2,250, rather than a 50 percent match on a $2,000 rollover as proposed Friday night.