Boeing Machinists Contract Talks Bog Down

With a strike deadline approaching, contract talks bogged down Sunday between Boeing Co. and the machinists union, which wants a share of the aerospace firm’s bulging profits.

The approximately 60 negotiators who have been meeting since Sept. 21 moved to round-the-clock talks over the weekend. The workers’ three-year contract expires at midnight Tuesday.

Union spokesman Jack Daniels said talks reached “a point of no movement” and the parties took an unspecified break to call in a federal mediator, Douglas P. Hammond, who met with both sides on Sunday.

Boeing’s 57,000 union machinists in the Seattle area, Portland, Ore., and Wichita, Kan., have voted to strike if an acceptable contract is not reached by the end of the day Tuesday.

In 1986, negotiators agreed to extend a strike deadline, but Daniels said it would be “pure guesswork” to say whether that would happen again. The last machinists strike against Boeing, in 1977, lasted two months.

Boeing, the world’s largest commercial aircraft builder, is enjoying its fifth straight year of record jetliner orders. So far this year, carriers have ordered 736 Boeing jets worth $38.5 billion.

Though Pentagon cutbacks have subdued military business, Boeing Commercial Airplanes has a backlog of nearly 1,600 jets worth roughly $70 billion, with deliveries set for well into the mid-1990s.

Some industry analysts, as well as some Boeing employees, doubt that a strike is likely, given the pressure on Boeing to deliver a full order book of commercial jets.

“Based on history, the union and Boeing have usually had a pretty good relationship,” said William Whitlow, an analyst with Dain Bosworth Inc. in Seattle. “I think there is room for compromise.”

But Daniels said there had been little movement on such key issues as a pay increase, whether the money will come as a wage hike or a bonus, retirement benefits and overtime.

Boeing officials declined to say what the company’s plans would be in case of a strike or to comment on negotiations.

The machinists have agreements that members of other unions will not do their work in the event of a strike, but other Boeing unions have no-strike clauses in their contracts.

For the first half of 1989, Boeing had net earnings of $356 million on sales of $9.07 billion. For 1988, profits were $614 million on $16.96 billion in sales.