Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with&nbsp;New Jersey Monthly&nbsp;magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.

Senior Editor

Gregory Polek

The Society for Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) expected to finish counting ballots cast by Boeing engineers and technicians on a new four-year contract proposal on Monday evening. Boeing’s offer, which SPEEA leadership urged its 23,000 Boeing members to reject, calls for an average 3.5-percent raise for engineers for each year of the agreement and average pay hikes for technicians of 3 percent for the first year, followed by 2.5 percent in each subsequent year.


Speaking with AIN last week, SPEEA director Ray Goforth called the entire offer “a breathtaking grab at power.” Apart from various cuts in benefits, Boeing’s proposal calls for the elimination of several contractual guarantees, such as those related to 401(k) plans, leaves of absence and medical benefits, making what SPEEA calls almost every key element subject to unilateral change by the company. In all cases, responded Boeing, it proposed the changes “as part of an effort to streamline the policies in place for various employee groups across the enterprise.”


Meanwhile, the company has questioned the motivation behind SPEEA’s decision to send the initial written offer directly to a vote, and, in Boeing’s words, abandon the negotiating process.


Goforth said that SPEEA considered the offer so bad, it saw little use in returning with a counterproposal. “We’ve been meeting for six months, so we had been negotiating,” he stressed. “It’s pretty obvious that [Boeing] had a strategy to tender this really awful offer and make us beg to make it less awful.”


Goforth said he saw a drastic change in the company’s approach to the negotiations when, in June, <a href="http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/2012-06-26/boeing-names-conner-lead-bca-albaugh-retire">Ray Conner replaced Jim Albaugh</a> as CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Before that time, said the SPEEA director, engineers in Boeing management led what he described as candid discussions about both sides’ interests. “When Albaugh left, that ceased,” said Goforth. “Corporate took over the negotiations, and when they took over the negotiations, engineering leadership stopped talking. Instead of hearing things like ‘engineering is the center of value creation at the company,’ we started hearing things like ‘your members are lucky to have jobs.’”


In a statement to AIN, Boeing vehemently denied Goforth’s charges.


“That was never said by any member of the Boeing negotiating team,” insisted a company spokesman. “And I can tell you that no one on the team feels that way. We’re absolutely committed to achieving a contract that rewards our employees for their many contributions, while ensuring our workforce remains competitive for future work in the long term.”


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