SPEEA members reject Boeing contract offers

17,000 engineers and professional workers at the aerospace giant also voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike

SEATTLE, WA (August 24, 2026) — On Friday, Boeing’s engineers, scientist, analysts, designers, technicians and other specialists voted down contract offers from the company and authorized a strike, per the workers’ union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace-IFPTE Local 2001. The current contracts expire in early October.

SPEEA’s Professional Unit of 13,000 workers rejected the proposed contract by more than 64% while SPEEA’s Technical unit rejected the offer by nearly 72%. Both units approved the strike authorization vote by at least 87%, with 92% of eligible union members participating in the votes.

With the first opportunity in 14 years to bargain entirely new contracts, SPEEA members are holding out for the best possible contract terms.

“Our negotiation team is prepared and willing to work with the company toward meaningful movement so that we can come to agreement on new contracts before Oct. 6,” the SPEEA team said Friday in a news release. “However, we also are prepared to call for a labor stoppage, based on the overwhelming support of our members for the strike authorization vote.”

SPEEA members in Everett in July. Photo: SPEEA

The negotiation team had unanimously recommended the offers to their fellow members, which included the largest wage-pool increase for SPEEA members since 1983 and some quality-of-life improvements. But decades of shareholder service at the expense of the company’s workforce have eroded workers’ trust. SPEEA pointed to the Boeing merger with McDonnell Douglas as the “the inflection point where Boeing shifted away from emphasis on engineering and technical excellence in favor of enlarging shareholder returns.”

As the negotiation team met with workers to share details on the contract offers, it became clear that the proposed collective bargaining agreements didn’t go far enough to address past harm.

“It’s important to acknowledge how we got here; this mistrust was built brick-by-brick over the past several contracts,” negotiation team members explained in Friday’s news release. “SPEEA-represented jobs eroded, quality and safety took a backseat to schedule, engineering and technical decisions were overruled or worse, ignored, and salaries failed to keep pace with both the market and inflation.”

It’s the same mistrust and build-up of mistreatment that spurred Machinists to strike Boeing in 2024. In the lead-up to that strike, then-Machinists 751 president Jon Holden told The STAND that decisions by previous management set the stage for the work stoppage.

“They extract profit and pay and retirement for themselves, and they do it at the cost of everyone else,” said Holden. “They do it at the cost of the supply chain. They squeeze the life out of the supply chain, they squeeze the life out of their workforce.”

That legacy looms large, even as current Boeing executives seek to improve the relationship with workers.

“We are all still collectively dealing with the consequences of prior management decisions,” SPEEA negotiators said. “The current executive leadership is saying and doing the right things, and the management team that met with us appeared sincere, solution-focused and genuine in their efforts to right the past errors of their predecessors.“

“Still, the membership has made clear that the current offer falls short, and without significant improvements to the last offer, they are prepared to strike.”