Spin, Spin, Spin

Boeing has issued a partial second offer on the SPEEA contract.

Boeing has made a big deal about how this is a much better offer than their last offer.

SPEEA has pointed out that it is still a worse offer than the existing contract.

Reading news stories on the subject today was an interesting education in spin.

Several articles emphasized improvements in this offer without specifying what they were improvements from – and without highlighting any of the takeaways. Provably correct but, in my biased opinion, misleading.

The union put out an email claiming that this contract was an attempt to split the union into factions – young and old, and ‘tech’ and ‘prof’ (the latter two being an existing division in SPEEA based on the possession of an engineering degree). By giving the techs the short end of the salary pools they attempt to create friction between the existing divisions, and by eliminating the pension benefit they create a situation where they can eventually play the ‘old guard’ off against the ‘young guard’ over retirement benefits. Probably correct in my biased opinion, but not provable.

Boeing, while offering its engineers a worse contract than we had, has given its executives double-digit raises this year and is giving the best stock dividend in years. The company, in defending this, claims that its engineers and executives are different ‘markets’. True. Engineers need to spend a decade in a particular and very narrow specialization within the aviation industry and be licensed by the Federal Government in order to be key employees at Boeing. Executives can come from anywhere and require no specific qualifications in order to be key employees at Boeing. They also get paid more. The company needs a huge number of engineers from a steadily shrinking pool. The company needs a small number of executives from a steadily expanding pool.

Hold on, something is backwards here…