A standoff between Boeing and the Machinists union that could thwart Everett’s chances to win the second 787 Dreamliner production line became clearer at an aerospace conference in Lynnwood on Monday.

Boeing is pushing for a no-strike deal that would influence the decision, which may come by the end of the year. But the International Association of Machinists (IAM) sees no need to reopen the current contract, signed last fall after a two-month strike, and is working toward the next scheduled contract in 2012.

“There’s a disconnect,” Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon conceded. “It has to be resolved.”

Earlier in the day in Charleston, S.C., Dreamliner program chief Scott Fancher officially unveiled the company logo on the side of its newly acquired fuselage-assembly facility. He told the new Boeing employees there of the likely schedule for a decision and said both Charleston and Everett are on the plane maker’s shortlist.

Boeing declined to confirm a report in the Charleston Regional Business Journal that Fancher indicated there are two other unnamed cities being considered.

In a separate development in Charleston, a worker filed a petition last Thursday — the day Boeing formally closed on the purchase of the operation from its 787 partner, Texas-based Vought — to decertify the Machinists union at the plant. That will likely trigger a vote that could oust the union two years after it organized the factory.

Because of discontent in the Charleston work force over the contract the IAM agreed to there last November, that move has a good chance of success.

If the decertification goes through, Everett will be competing against a nonunion facility for the second 787 line.

The worker told the Business Journal he hoped getting rid of the union would help win the second line for Charleston.

The news from South Carolina added a sense of urgency to the Lynnwood summit of Pacific Northwest political leaders and representatives of the state’s aerospace industry — a conference starkly billed as “Saving Washington Aerospace.”

Yet a clear discrepancy emerged there between the Machinists, Boeing and politicians as to the deadline for what needs to be done to win the new 787 line.

Larry Brown, IAM legislative and political director, said the union is working with Boeing to improve relations.

Source: Seatlle Times