SEATTLE - Boeing Co. engineers and technical workers have voted to ratify new contracts, ensuring four years of labor peace at the company's commercial airplane operations. In votes tallied Monday after balloting by mail, 79 percent of members in the professional unit of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace approved the deal. Union spokesman Bill Dugovich said the vote was 69 percent for ratification in the technical unit. The two agreements were reached Nov. 14 following 2 1/2 weeks of negotiations. They include pay raises averaging 5 percent a year, higher pension payments and improved medical coverage with small cost increases for employees.

Union officers and negotiators had recommended approval of the two contracts, one covering about 14,200 scientists, engineers and other professionals with average salaries of $92,161, and the other for nearly 6,700 computer technicians, manual writers and other white-collar hourly workers paid an average of $68,157.

Nearly 20,000 of the affected workers are in the Seattle area and about 550 are in Ogden, Utah; Palmdale, Calif., and Gresham, Ore.

A strike would have been the second against Boeing this year following a walkout by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers that halted commercial aircraft production for eight weeks before it ended Nov. 3.

It also would have been the sixth in less than two decades to hit Boeing's commercial operations following previous Machinists strikes of 28 days in 2005, 69 days in 1995 and 48 days in 1989 and a 40-day SPEEA walkout in 2000. SPEEA's only other strike was a largely symbolic one-day walkout in 1993.

As in the machinists' strike, the bulk of the employees covered by the SPEEA contracts work on Boeing commercial aircraft, with the rest in military and other government work.

SPEEA also has been negotiating with Boeing since Nov. 17 on a contract covering about 700 engineers in Wichita, Kan., although talks were suspended for most of Thanksgiving week. The contract expires Friday and covers mostly military work.

Boeing announced Nov. 19 that 800 salaried and hourly jobs in Wichita would be cut over the next year.

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On the Net:

Boeing: http://www.boeing.com

SPEEA: http://www.speea.org

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