Wichita ? An election to decertify the second-largest union at the Boeing Co.’s Wichita plant will be Feb. 12, just a week before the current contract expires.

National Labor Relations Board officials met for four hours Tuesday with company and union representatives and workers to set the date for the vote.

The union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, represents 3,460 Boeing workers in Wichita. Union foes gathered signatures from more than 1,250 workers to force a vote on the issue.

“Right now, I am feeling pretty good,” said Christine Minge, a Boeing quality systems specialist and one of the petition organizers. “The meeting went very well. We got five weeks to campaign to get out to vote.”

Charles Bofferding, executive director for SPEEA, said the Wichita unit has close to 45 percent membership, and union officials are confident the vote will show solidarity by the membership.

Bofferding said the big decisions in contract talks usually come at the end of negotiations, and said the timing of the decertification election could be “just right.”

“The best thing is not to have this distraction and just focus on giving a good contract,” Bofferding said. “But given we have this distraction, we are going to take advantage of it to send the right message that represented employees support having the contract.”

Boeing also has said it would not oppose an election on the issue.

“They support an election either way, but they are keeping hands off from our group,” Minge said of the company. “This is an employee grassroots movement and that is the way we would like to keep it.”