Posted on the Biz Buzz blog at 9:34 a.m. Wednesday The Boeing Co. and its largest union, the Machinists, sit down at the negotiating table today for marathon talks leading to a “best and final offer” to be considered by union members Sept. 3.

The portents aren’t good. The union wants to make up for what it considers ground lost in the last two contracts because of the ill health of the aerospace industry. And Boeing wants to tie increases in compensation to company performance and unshackle itself from its defined benefit pension plan for new employees.

“We haven’t made as much progress as we had hoped,” said Machinist Union District Local 751 President Tom Wroblewski.

“Boeing needs to get serious with their offers and quit talking about takeaways,” he said Wednesday.

The two sides have been meeting and trading proposals for months, but the talks at a SeaTac hotel are when things finally get down to hard negotiations.

Boeing spokesman Tim Healy said the company is pleased with its new negotiation approach of starting substantive talks earlier and letting Boeing employees know more clearly what the company is seeking.

The fact that the statements surrounding the hotel talks seems louder this year, he said, is indicative of Boeing’s efforts to roll out its major proposals to the union and Boeing workers before negotiators retreat behind closed doors.

The union, which has 26,000 members representing assembly line and parts production workers in the Puget Sound area and elsewhere, has scheduled a rally at Angle Lake Park in SeaTac for 12:30 p.m. Sunday. The union members will assemble first in the parking lot of the SeaTac DoubleTree Hotel, where the negotiations are ongoing.

Boeing’s incentive pay plan, rolled out to workers earlier this month, would grant workers up to an extra 20 days’ pay for exceeding profit, quality and safety goals.

That incentive pay plan would yield a Machinist making $50,000 a year an additional $4,000 a year at its maximum.

Wroblewski said the new incentive plan proposal is unacceptable because Boeing insists on being able to change its terms at any time and because it won’t give workers clear knowledge of how they’re progressing against the company’s goals.

Boeing’s new retirement plan proposed for union workers hired beginning in 2009 would contribute up to 8 percent of an employee’s pay (half of that as a match contribution to employee savings) to a retirement plan.

The company says the plan would be advantageous to new workers because it instantly vests them in the plan and because it’s portable if the employee moves to another job.

Boeing says that since 1999 the monthly pension benefit formula has risen 75 percent compared with a cost-of-living increase of 28.5 percent.

The union points to record Boeing profits and a 3,600-plane backlog and says its members deserve to share in that prosperity.

If union members reject the final offer on Sept. 3, they could strike, likely shutting down Boeing assembly line production.

One analyst says such a strike could cost the company more than $3 billion in sales, although those sales could be recovered once employees got back to work.

A strike would also further delay Boeing’s already-lagging 787 Dreamliner’s first flight, now set for November.

Machinist members would receive $150-a-week strike benefits beginning the third week of a strike provided they work on the picket line.

Both sides say they’re not thinking about a strike, but rather on reaching an acceptable agreement.

John Gillie: 253-597-8663