EVERETT — Workers at Cadence Aerospace-Giddens here apparently voted this week to organize as part of the Machinists union, which represents more than 30,000 Boeing employees around metro Puget Sound.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) announced that tentative outcome Friday but cautioned that unionization is uncertain because not all votes have been counted and the company is disputing who was eligible to vote.
About 250 production workers were initially deemed eligible by the National Labor Relations Board to vote in the election, which was held Thursday and Friday. A simple majority is necessary to approve union representation.
Cadence-Giddens earlier filed a petition with the NLRB, contending that not all hourly workers were actually eligible for collective bargaining.
“Workers at the company’s two Everett plants voted by a roughly 3-to-2 margin to join the union,” the IAM said in a new release. “However, there are 25 ballots that have not been counted yet, because the company has sought to exclude those workers from the bargaining unit.”
Jesse Cote, the organizing director for District 751, said the decision could swing the other way if more than 90 percent of those 25 ballots were cast against the union.
An NLRB hearing will be held to sort out the disagreement, the union said.
The vote was scheduled by the NLRB after enough workers — at least one-third of eligible employees — said they wanted to hold the vote. Workers signed vote requests distributed and collected by District 751, which then petitioned federal labor regulators to hold the election.
The union said organizing was spurred by the company’s decision to freeze wages and stop matching contributions to retirement plans.
The company, headquartered in Newport Beach, California, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The conglomerate operates seven aerospace-parts companies in the U.S. and one in Mexico.
Boeing is a major customer for the company’s Everett plants, where workers create precision-machined parts and assemblies. Nationally, Cadence Aerospace also supplies Airbus Group, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman and Fokker.
While the IAM has suffered some high-profile organizing setbacks in recent months, District 751 has had several local successes in the past two years. Workers at Jorgensen Forge in Tukwila, AIM Aerospace in Sumner and Hytek Finishes in Kent voted to join the union.
Last month, the union’s top leadership, called the International, postponed an organizing vote among 3,200 eligible workers at Boeing’s South Carolina operations. The company assembles 787 Dreamliners there and in Everett.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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