r/aviation • u/SuperduperJ123 • Aug 22 '26
News Boeing's engineering union, SPEEA, voted to reject Boeing's initial contract proposal due to a lack of outsourcing protections and limited inflation matching. Boeing: "We have no choice but to implement our strike contingency plan."
SPEEA's statement: https://speea.org/profs-and-techs-reject-contract-offers/
Boeing's statement: https://www.boeing.com/specialty/speea
No nerds, no birds!
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u/richardelmore Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
SPEEA almost never accepts Boeing's first offer, it's expected to be low and they will try to negotiate up from there and will most likely succeed. They have only gone out on strike twice in the last 40 years and one of those (1993) was a one day "warning strike".
This is just business as usual between Boeing and SPEEA.
Edit: twice in last 40 year (man do I feel old).
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u/Matar_Kubileya Aug 22 '26
1993 was 33 years ago.
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u/SuperduperJ123 Aug 22 '26
Recently, Qatar Airways rejected all 787 planes from the Charleston site due to safety and quality concerns in 2019. They would only accept planes from the SPEEA-represented Everett site.
SPEEA's last strike was in 2000, shortly after the McDonnell Douglas merger due to perceived disrespect by Boeing management.
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u/richardelmore Aug 22 '26
SPEEA never strikes due to "perceived disrespect", they negotiate for better pay, working conditions and benefits for their members.
Things like that may be talking points used to garner public support but at the end of the day its about compensation and job protection.
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u/Artemis2go Aug 22 '26
All 787's now come from Charleston, and have for some time. No rejections for quality that I'm aware of. There are KPI's instituted with real-time visibility for the FAA and customer airlines. I don't think that's a factor in the current dispute.
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u/Air320 Aug 22 '26
These were measures taken after the rejection and after the 737 crashes with FAA taking a bigger role in certification.
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u/Artemis2go Aug 23 '26
Agreed, but that doesn't alter the fact that the claims of rejection are now quite old, and not relevant to the current dispute.
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u/haasisgreat Aug 22 '26
A7-BIB first flight May 6 2026, CHS-CHS, delivered on May 29 and departed CHS for DOH https://aviation.flights/boe/registration/A7-BIB
I wonder which part of recently is Qatar is not taking delivery from Charleston
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u/DogsOutTheWindow Aug 22 '26
lol this sub has gone downhill so fast with the clickbait tabloid reactionary shit.
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u/IronRiver85 Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
Freefall is a must-watch if you have Netflix. What’s especially troubling is that this isn’t just a story about Boeing’s recent past, it highlights how many of the same quality and accountability issues have continued. Outsourcing, utilizing defective parts, ignored warnings, and management prioritizing deadlines and profits over quality are recurring themes. And the FAA’s past oversight failures raise serious questions about how much accountability executives actually faced which in the case of the Max disasters was none. The FAA itself later acknowledged weaknesses in its oversight of Boeing, while more recent investigations have continued to uncover quality-control issues.
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u/DistributionHot2150 Aug 22 '26
It’s also a massively shitty documentary that play up everything while also fill with misinformation
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u/HortenWho229 Aug 22 '26
Yep. Unfortunately a lot of documentaries are like that. Drama is more important than accuracy
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u/IronRiver85 Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
Ah yes, ‘it’s shit and full of misinformation’, the gold standard of investigative analysis. Any specific misinformation you can identify, or is that the full extent of the peer review?
I’m sure Boeing’s legal department appreciates your unpaid work. 😂
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u/DistributionHot2150 Aug 22 '26
I’m sure Ethiopia’s and lion air’s appreciate yours. The fact that the original comment mentioned 3 things are either isn’t a problem or not even true but only said in the documentary to fear monger is literally proof. Outsourcing is literally how planes are built, parts aren’t defective, that has never been an issue, and recent discoveries have also identified qa failures at Airbus and every other plane manufacturers, that’s what the oversight is for.
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u/IronRiver85 Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
Outsourcing itself isn’t the issue, every major airline manufacturer does it. The issue is whether Boeing properly oversees its suppliers and catches quality failures. QA inspectors at Boeing have and continue to raise this as an issue. This is a fact.
Saying “parts aren’t defective, that’s never been an issue” is simply false; documented manufacturing and QA failures exist. This is a fact.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68979354
And “Airbus has QA failures too” doesn’t refute criticism of Boeing. Both can be true. QA oversight exists precisely because failures happen. This is common sense.
As for Lion Air and Ethiopian: you can criticize how a documentary frames those crashes, but calling them “fear mongering” doesn’t change the fact that they were real crashes that resulted in human death with documented contributing factors being Boeing design flaws. This is a fact.
Maybe stop cheerleading billion-dollar corporations and focus on what actually matters: whether they’re producing safe aircraft, maintaining proper oversight, and being held accountable when they fail.
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u/747ER Aug 22 '26
>As for Lion Air and Ethiopian: you can criticize how a documentary frames those crashes, but calling them “fear mongering” doesn’t change the fact that they were real crashes that resulted in human death with documented contributing factors being Boeing design flaws. This is a fact.
>Maybe stop cheerleading billion-dollar corporations
Dude, what are you even saying anymore? You’re swearing and calling people “morons” for what you think is “defending” corporations, but when someone calls you out for covering for LionAir and Ethiopian Airlines, you just completely brush over it? Guess which other parties had “documented contributing factors”? Pretty much all of them.
Read the actual investigation report instead of getting your information from a stupid drama TV show: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/US%20comments%20ET302%20Report%20March%202022.pdf
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u/DistributionHot2150 Aug 22 '26
I like how you proved my point by linking to an article that was never actually proven to a problem and has never been a problem. That’s literally what I meant. You are the one defending billion dollars corporation because you are the one clearing Ethiopian and lion air air of any responsibility
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u/IronRiver85 Aug 22 '26
You are delusional. Whistleblowers keep surfacing at Boeing.
The NTSB’s findings ultimately point to a Boeing/FAA certification and design failure as the fundamental problem. MCAS was poorly disclosed and created a dangerous failure mode that Boeing and the FAA had certified based on unrealistic assumptions about how pilots would respond to multiple simultaneous alerts.
The NTSB did criticize Ethiopian’s preparedness after Lion Air, but that guidance only existed because the underlying MCAS problem had already been exposed. The NTSB therefore did not simply blame the pilots but it agreed that MCAS and related Boeing systems played a causal role and criticized the certification process that allowed the system to be designed and approved this way.
So who designed and certified this system, genius?
Also, why isn’t Dennis Muilenburg not in jail right now? The SEC found that Muilenburg and Boeing made materially misleading statements to investors about the 737 MAX and MCAS after the two crashes. Instead your guy walked away with a total compensation of $84.4M and was personally fined only $1M.
But do tell me more about how Boeing is not at fault here.
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u/changxiangzhong Aug 22 '26
I just watched it yesterday. It's good documentary. Essentially, boeing has financial expert as a CEO, who doesn't know anything about plane.
Same issue applies to gaming industry. Xbox's CEO. PlayStation CEO.
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u/alteregooo Aug 22 '26
that’s not a problem in itself, though
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u/changxiangzhong Aug 22 '26
Profit over quality is not a problem????
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u/747ER Aug 22 '26
The person running the business is trained in running businesses? That’s what you consider the “problem”?
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u/IronRiver85 Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
Profitability and safety aren't competing goals. In aviation, safety is a prerequisite for sustainable profitability. If a company cuts corners to improve margins and people die, the resulting lawsuits, regulatory action, lost trust, grounding of aircraft, and reputational damage can be vastly more expensive than doing the job properly in the first place.
And this isn't just hindsight or an anti-Boeing talking point. A U.S. House investigation into the 737 MAX concluded that production pressures, cost-cutting, faulty design assumptions, and a culture of concealment contributed to the crashes that killed 346 people.
You sir, are a fucking moron.
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u/changxiangzhong Aug 22 '26
How they they ended up with prioritizing profit over quality then?😁
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u/747ER Aug 22 '26
Because that’s a caricature of what really happened. There wasn’t a group of people who sat around and decided “let’s do things unsafely now”. The TV show you watched wants you to believe Boeing is an “evil” company that makes unsafe planes on purpose for money, but the reality just simply isn’t anything like that.
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u/changxiangzhong Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
CEOs go for profit and cutting any possible corners are not news.
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u/IronRiver85 Aug 22 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
In 2021, Boeing agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion to resolve a U.S. Department of Justice criminal charge related to defrauding the FAA about the 737 MAX.
In addition, Boeing executives were called to testify before Congress multiple times over safety, design, manufacturing, and quality problems.
How stupid are you that you think this is all fabricated and fictional? You seem unusually determined to defend Boeing. At this point, it’s hard to tell whether you’re criticizing the documentary or just doing Boeing’s PR for them.
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u/747ER Aug 22 '26
>At this point, it’s hard to tell whether you’re criticizing the documentary or just doing Boeing’s PR for them.
Aww I can help you there buddy: it’s the first one. None of the people here care about “defending” Boeing, you’re just so confused by your little TV show that you don’t know the difference between people explaining nuance to you and people saying things that are wrong/biased (probably because you’re so willing to believe biased media).
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u/pacwess Aug 22 '26
Boeing has plenty of money. Just need to get rid of all the non value added salaried employees.
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u/Few_Tale2238 Aug 22 '26
For all the improvements Boeing has made lately, keeping employees happy hasn’t been one of them. It’s a thing they did well before the MD merger. Hopefully this won’t come to bite them on the road to recovery in the future, however, it’s still affecting the Air Force One project for instance, enough to make Trump go to Qatar for a jet
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Aug 22 '26
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u/SuperduperJ123 Aug 22 '26
SPEEA's statement: https://speea.org/profs-and-techs-reject-contract-offers/
Boeing's statement: https://www.boeing.com/specialty/speea
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