Wichita ? Workers trying to decertify the second-largest union at Boeing’s Wichita facility say they are just 20 votes shy of collecting enough signatures to force a vote on the issue.

Office workers and other professionals represented by the technical and professional unit of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace have been collecting signatures to petition the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an election on union representation.

To force a vote, union opponents say they need signatures from 30 percent of workers represented in the bargaining group. As of Friday, organizers had collected 1,080 signatures.

Union opponents set 1,100 signatures as their goal based on the assumption that 3,700 workers were represented. The union said Friday it represented 3,400 workers in the bargaining unit — meaning opponents already may have enough signatures.

Organizers initially had planned to file the decertification petition on Monday, but have now decided to wait until the week of Dec. 15 to give everybody a chance to sign and potentially have far more signatures than required, said Brad Kiewel, a Boeing computer programmer analyst.

“This is a chance to find out — once and for all — if there is a majority that wants to be represented,” Kiewel said.

Bob Brewer, the union’s Midwest director, said officials were optimistic the majority of workers wanted union representation. Forty-two percent of represented workers in the bargaining unit are members of the union, which has additional support among nonunion members, he said.

Some workers dispute the union’s claim that the number of dues-paying members is that high in a right-to-work state like Kansas.

“These people are very vocal, very visible, and they have great ideas. What we would like to see is them putting those efforts into SPEEA,” Brewer said. “Be a part of the solution, not the problem. Join a SPEEA committee, run for office, make the changes — but let’s all do it together and in a positive direction.”

To do that, Kiewel said, workers would have to join the union and pay $28 a month in dues. “It seems like unnecessary interference and the best way is not to have that interference,” Kiewel said.

In a close vote, employees voted for the union in June 2000. Only 65 votes separated the two sides.

Shirley Moon, a programmer analyst at Boeing, said between 200 and 400 workers like herself were unable to vote in that election because they were initially misclassified. They have since been included in the bargaining unit.

“If these … people were classified right, I don’t think we would have a union here,” Moon said.