The union representing GE Aerospace’s engineers plans to advocate for shoring up the company’s U.S.-based workforce when national contract negotiations begin June 2.
“We want them to invest in engineering. We want them investing into the plant,” said Jerry Carney, the GE Conference Chair with the International Union of Electrical Workers-Communications Workers of America.
IUE-CWA is bargaining for 2,100 GE Aerospace workers across four facilities in Massachusetts, Kansas, Kentucky and New York who manufacture, assemble and perform maintenance on parts for commercial and military aircraft engines, including the CFM56 variants that power Airbus and Boeing passenger airliners.
This is the first national contract negotiation since General Electric split its various subsidiaries into independent companies, a process completed in 2024. GE Aerospace’s workers argue that the conglomerate’s once broad portfolio — from lighting to silicones — had prevented the union from being able to independently negotiate higher wages and benefits specifically for aviation workers. Now that GE Aerospace is a standalone entity, Carney said the union sees an opportunity to create a stronger contract that incorporates cost-of-living increases and better health insurance.
“We will hold General Electric accountable for what we make, because the union, along with GE, wants to make a quality part,” Carney said.
To support its position, IUE-CWA has pointed to business decisions Boeing has made over the years that, in its view, prioritized profits and shareholders over investing in employees. “From 2003-2019, Boeing funneled around $80 billion into stock buybacks and dividends and increased executive pay while neglecting the very people, processes, and R&D crucial to safe, quality, on-time production,” IUE-CWA wrote in a January open letter addressed to “the aviation engine industry.”
“The company undermined its skilled union labor force in the process, leading to disastrous results: production delays, mounting debt, and—most tragically—loss of life,” the letter said in an apparent reference to the 346 people who died in the 2018 and 2019 737 MAX 8 crashes.
Boeing declined to comment, but CEO Kelly Ortberg has been vocal about the steps the company has taken to revamp its internal culture and improve production processes since he joined in September. As part of that reset, Boeing in November reached a new contract with some 33,000 employees after a seven-week strike. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers that represents Boeing machinists said the contract “creates a new foundation to build on for the future.”
“We are ready to help Boeing change direction and return to building the highest quality and safest airplanes in the world,” union leaders said in the statement. “Our members are critical to that mission, and now have a stronger voice in the decision making process to ensure those needed improvements are made.”
Julie Su, a fellow at Washington, D.C., think tank The Century Foundation who assisted with the Boeing negotiations in her role as the acting secretary of labor during the Biden administration, said there’s “a recognition on the company side that the best investment they can make is a good investment in the workers in order to be a successful company.”
She added: “A strong worker voice is helpful in helping to identify when there might be a dangerous situation, and so I think the public is also seeing just how valuable it is when workers get a say.”
In a statement, GE Aerospace said that the company and its unions have “successfully negotiated 16 consecutive national contracts and many more local contracts in the U.S. throughout the past five decades.”
“We are committed to negotiating in good faith and continuing to meet the needs of our employees and customers as we build a stronger future together,” the statement reads.
The uncertain economic climate may present another challenge, as the Trump administration’s tariffs are increasing costs for the aviation industry. GE Aerospace estimates its tariff expenses could reach “more than $500 million this year,” CEO Larry Culp told Reuters last month.
Carney, the IUE-CWA chair, spoke to me before Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April. He said while the union was generally concerned about tariffs, its top priority is keeping aerospace engineering and manufacturing jobs in the United States.
Separate from the upcoming contract negotiations, IUE-CWA wants to pause a pending deal between GE Aerospace and the Indian-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. to begin producing certain fighter jet engines in India in addition to the U.S. In a statement, the union called for “an investigation into the resultant job losses, impact on the resilience of the US industrial base, and a remedy that will preserve our jobs, before the deal gets finalized.”
“If GE doesn’t succeed, we don’t succeed. We want job security out of this, and out of job security, we want a future with General Electric,” Carney said. “We want to make General Electric, again, one of the top industries in the country.”
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