By Alwyn Scott and Bill Rigby
NEW YORK/SEATTLE, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Angry Boeing machinists
have filed eight unfair labor practice charges with the National
Labor Relations Board alleging their union’s top leaders
manipulated a recent contract vote, and demanding that ballots
be recast.
The NLRB has launched an investigation into the charges,
filed by individual members against the International
Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said Anne
Pomerantz, an attorney with the NLRB regional office in Seattle.
The charges stem from a Jan. 3 vote that approved Boeing’s
contract offer by just 600 votes, ensuring its latest jetliner,
the 777X, will be built in the Seattle area.
The vote divided the union because, to gain the work,
machinists had to agree to eliminate their pension after 2016.
If the push for a recount fails, which appears likely,
Boeing will resume the rocky relationship with the city and
region it helped to build, although it is less of a force.
Union members allege their international leaders timed the
vote to coincide with the holidays, when many members were on
vacation, and “disenfranchised” them, Pomerantz said.
The members also allege leaders held the vote over
objections from the local district, which considered the new
offer too similar to a November proposal to merit re-balloting.
“All the charges we have seen are against the international,
not Boeing,” Pomerantz said.
The “international,” an umbrella organization, oversees
local districts, such as District 751, which represents more
than 31,000 machinists in the Puget Sound area.
FAIR OR NOT?
“We were not fairly represented by the international,” said
Robley Evans, 51, a local union steward and 28-year employee at
Boeing, who filed one of the unfair labor practice charges.
“When you have a vote that was razor thin and you influence
it like that … It changed the election in my opinion.”
But R. Thomas Buffenbarger, international president, said
workers had every opportunity to vote, and 500 applied for
electronic absentee ballots, which could be cast from anywhere.
“This contract vote was probably as accessible to everyone
in that bargaining unit as any I’ve ever seen,” he said in an
interview.
The ballots were counted at union halls where workers cast
them, he said, “in eyesight of everyone who wanted to watch.”
Pomerantz said the NLRB will interview all sides and
determine if there is merit in moving forward with a case that
the leaders did not provide fair representation. If so, the NLRB
General Counsel could file a complaint.
Boeing noted that none of the charges have been filed
against it, but declined to comment further.
“Boeing has no authority over the voting process or
scheduling,” spokesman Doug Alder said.
Bryan Corliss, spokesman for District 751, said no local
leaders were involved in filing charges.
“This is all being member-driven,” he said.
One of four lodges, or local groupings of workers, passed
resolutions on Tuesday calling for an audit and a revote, he
said. The others were expected to meet this week, their first
opportunity to talk since the vote last Friday.
“We’re going to hear a lot from our members,” he said.
MILITANT PAST
Seattle staged the first U.S. city-wide general strike in
1919, and that militancy lives on. Boeing has been hit with four
major strikes in the past 25 years, halting 200 days of
production in Seattle-area plants.
In an effort to assert independence from the region, Boeing
moved its headquarters to Chicago in 2001. In 2011, it opened a
787 production line in South Carolina, a state much less
friendly to unions, and has acquired land there for expansion.
Fear that the new widebody aircraft and its new
carbon-composite wing factory would leave the state gave the
company leverage on its workforce and the local government.
Boeing received offers from 22 states interested in the factory.
If “the 777X was not built in the region, it would have been
a big hit to Seattle,” said Roque Deherrera, a business advocate
at Seattle’s Office of Economic Development.
A ‘no’ vote by the union, “would have sent a clear signal
that further models would not be built in Puget Sound, which
would be tremendously significant,” said Alex Pietsch, who works
for Washington’s governor promoting aerospace.
“The 777X was really the watershed moment.”
Boeing’s commercial aircraft operation contributes $70
billion to the state economy through aircraft sales, buying
local goods and paying wages, according to a recent study by
aerospace industry boosters.
Younger tech workers, who flooded the city over the past two
decades, might earn and spend more, and the economy now includes
Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc, Costco
Wholesale Corp, Starbucks Corp and other big
companies. But the loss of Boeing would wipe out part of the
region’s middle class and gut blue-collar jobs, especially
around Boeing’s plants in Everett and Renton.
HIGH BAR
To spur a revote, however, the facts would need to show that
the actions of international leaders were discriminatory,
arbitrary or in bad faith, a relatively high bar, said Jeffrey
Hirsch, a former NLRB lawyer who is now a professor and
associate dean at the University of North Carolina.
“If in fact it really disenfranchised folks, that may be an
issue,” he said.
But the standard is not whether the election could have been
done better. It is whether the actions were arbitrary.
“A lower turnout doesn’t necessarily mean people were
disenfranchised,” Hirsch added.
He also noted that with trial and appeals, the case could
last three years or more. By then, Boeing would have built the
factory for the 777X, which is due to enter service in 2020.
The machinist have been successful before. In 2011, the NLRB
filed a complaint against Boeing, alleging the company built a
new factory in South Carolina as retaliation against the
machinists for striking.
The complaint quoted Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney as
saying he was “diversifying (the) labor pool and labor
relationship,” and moving 787 work because of “strikes happening
every three to four years in Puget Sound.”
The case went to trial, Pomerantz said, but settled when
Boeing and the machinists struck a deal to extend their current
contract until 2016, in exchange for work on the 737 jet staying
in the Puget Sound region.
That contract is the one machinists voted last week to
extend to 2024.
