Boeing engineers decertify union
Local workers oust AFL-CIO affiliate in one of the largest such actions in the U.S. Some may opt for a separate union.
July 13, 2002
By JAN NORMAN
The Orange County Register
Los Angeles Local Boeing Co. engineers have voted to throw out the union that has represented them for 56 years in one of the nation's largest union decertifications in history, according to the National Labor Relations Board.
Engineers in Huntington Beach, Long Beach and Torrance and at Vandenberg Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral, Fla., voted 1,677 to 1,237 to decertify the AFL-CIO-affiliated Southern California Professional Engineering Association. Seventy-eight percent of the 4,127 eligible members of the bargaining unit voted in the election earlier this week.
The union challenged 321 ballots cast either by mail or submitted to a voting location separate from the voter's home office. However, the NLRB announced the election results because those challenged ballots were not enough to change the outcome, said board spokesman James Small.
Parties have seven days to file objections. Union trustee Kevin Kistler said representatives would discuss that possibility over the weekend.
Once the election is certified, the engineers' collective bargaining contract will be void. William Hartman, a Boeing attorney in Seal Beach, said they will receive the same compensation package as the company's engineers who are already nonunion.
Despite the size of the bargaining unit, experts said, the vote probably does not signal a significant shift for the labor movement because the campaign was not solely for or against union representation. Some even predicted that the decertification sets the stage for further union organizing efforts at Boeing.
Although unions represent only 3 percent of nonpublic professional employees, such as engineers, "these types of elections usually are about the performance of the local union," said Richard Hankins, an outside legal counsel for Boeing.
The engineers' union had represented McDonnell Douglas workers before the company was acquired by Boeing. Before the campaign to throw out the union, some engineers had tried to replace it with the larger, Seattle-based Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, which represents other Boeing engineers.
"There was a lot of internal dissent, so motives for people voting for decertification might not be that they don't want any union representation," said UCLA professor Don Mitchell, who teaches labor relations.
He expects the Seattle union "to at least sniff around to see if there is interest in representation."
Kistler said the SCPEA also will strive to rebuild its base for a future election because more than 1,200 people had voted for representation this time.
No new union representation election can be held for at least a year, the NLRB's Small said.
Boeing attorney Hartman noted that "very few of these engineers had ever voted on a union because (SCPEA) was formed more than 50 years ago. We always prefer to deal with employees individually in such cases."
One core of engineers is unlikely to change its anti-union stand. Boeing moved into the bargaining unit some former Rockwell engineers who had never been in a union.
"I was one of those who stood up and said I'll never be in a union," said Michelle Voorheis, who had helped with the decertification movement but has since moved to another Boeing division in Seal Beach.
She was one of about 25 decertification advocates, union representatives and Boeing attorneys who awaited the election outcome Friday at the NLRB's Los Angeles offices. No one cheered or booed as the tally was announced. Union people left the building immediately, refusing to comment. The union opponents used their cell phones to relay the results to co-workers back at the office.
The vote tally was posted on an employee Web site within two hours.
"I'm glad it's over. It's been a long fight," said Richard "Chip" Terracina, of the Long Beach office, listed as the official petitioner for the movement.
Terracina was a union member who favored switching to the Seattle union. After SCPEA officials refused to accept pro-change officials elected last November, Terracina and many of his colleagues joined a fledgling campaign to oust SCPEA completely.
After months of wrangling - including a representation fight between the two unions -- and challenges by the union, the NLRB scheduled the decertification vote.
In a May effort to block a possible loss in the election, union officials tried to persuade Terracina to withdraw his petition and allow engineers to vote for one of the two unions, an election they had previously opposed. Terracina said no.
Of Friday's outcome Terracina said, "I feel bad for the 321 people whose votes the union wouldn't allow to be counted. It went against a pre-election agreement."
Union spokesman Jeff Rusich said the union had a right to challenge those ballots, and they would have been counted eventually if they could have affected the result.
