SEATTLE (AP) — The union representing Boeing engineers and technical workers has recalled four board members who rebelled against the union's longtime executive director a few months ago.
By margins ranging from 56 percent to 58 percent, members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace voted to recall Treasurer Bob Wilkerson, Secretary Dave Baine and Northwest Region vice presidents Mike Dunn and Jill Ritchey.
About one-quarter of the eligible voters cast ballots in a mail-in election prompted by a member petition.
After results of the vote were announced Wednesday, two of the three remaining board members — Cynthia Cole, the board's president, and Tom McCarty, a Northwest regional vice president — held a special meeting and named Cole acting executive director and McCarty treasurer, SPEEA spokesman Bill Dugovich said.
The union's Northwest council will vote to elect three members to fill the vacant regional vice president seats.
In July, SPEEA's board voted 4-3 to discontinue SPEEA Executive Director Charles Bofferding's contract, effectively firing him.
Bofferding had headed SPEEA's Seattle-based staff since 1991. He led a successful 40-day strike in 2000, and negotiated a contract that won hefty pay raises for Boeing engineers and technical staff in December 2005.
Critics suggested he ran the union autocratically, an accusation he has dismissed as unfounded.
The search for a new executive director continues, and Bofferding is among more than 20 candidates who have applied for the job, Dugovich said.
SPEEA represents about 24,400 Boeing engineers and technical workers in the Seattle area, Oregon, Utah, Kansas, Texas and California.
