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SEATTLE – Every Wednesday, thousands of Boeing engineers show up to work in red shirts emblazoned with a pointed message for the plane maker’s executives: “No Nerds, No Birds.”
The displays of solidarity in Boeing’s office towers and labs are growing as engineers and technical workers prepare for labor negotiations later this summer, and a contract that expires Oct. 6. The Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), IFPTE Local 2001 has handed out more than 10,000 red t-shirts to members, along with miniature burn barrels — a nod to picket-line tradition — and desk tents proclaiming, “Giving a damn since 1946.”
That slogan is both a sly dig at one of the values Boeing adopted last year under new CEO Kelly Ortberg (“Give a damn!”), and a hint of underlying tension as he works to turn around its culture and finances. Lengthy strikes by hourly workers crippled the company’s commercial jet manufacturing soon after Ortberg took over the top job in 2024, then hamstrung its St. Louis military aircraft factories in 2025.
While factory workers fought for record pay hikes and relief from mandatory overtime, Boeing’s engineers intend to address anxieties widely shared by American professionals today.
Work from home, artificial intelligence and “a return to market-leading compensation” are among the contract priorities for the white-collar union heading into its first full-scale negotiations in more than a decade. SPEEA represents 17,000 Boeing engineers, technical workers, pilots and other professionals across the West Coast.
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