For Boeing (NYSE: BA), there's more hinging on today's machinists' contract vote than the company's primary labor costs over the next three years.

"The fate of future orders for the 787 Dreamliner could weigh in the balance," stock analyst C. Leonard Bauer told BloggingStocks Wednesday.

About 27,000 members in the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union in Washington State, Oregon and Kansas will vote today concerning whether to accept a three-year contract, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. Contact vote results are expected Wednesday night.

Shares of Boeing (NYSE: BA) rose 90 cents to $66.79 in Wednesday morning trading.

Despite Boeing's offer of a $5,000 signing bonus and a pay increase totaling 11% over the 3-year contract, its passage is hardly a slam dunk, Bauer said. "I know the media likes to portray every major union contract as a big deal, but this one really is a big issue. There are a lot of nervous parties watching this vote, parts suppliers to Boeing, businesses in the affected regions, and of course, almost every major airline around the world," Bauer said. "A protracted strike at Boeing would jeopardize several commercial airplane delivery timetables."

Work stoppage could hurt 787 orders

Following management techniques first propounded by Marie ("Let them eat cake") Antoinette, the board of directors of German engineering firm Siemens AG (ADR) (NYSE:SI) voted 10 days ago to boost compensation for its top twelve executives by almost 30%. It proposed this increase at the same time that the company was negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement with its unionized workforce, 5,400 of whom have already been let go. Just to make negotiations interesting, this increase was awarded at the same time an additional 3,000 German jobs were put at risk due to the bankruptcy declaration of a Siemens subsidiary, BenQ Corporation in Taiwan, maker of mobile handsets.

Heinrich von Pierer, Siemens' board chairman, argued in face of criticism that the compensation of Siemens' executives is low compared to comparable German companies. Currently, the twleve executives split a bucket of money worth about $35 million U.S. Siemens stock has risen only modestly over the past several years. It increased 12.3% over the past three yaers, while the DAX (German equivalent to S&P 500) has climbed 82.3%.

The union boss in charge of negotiations with Siemens management stated: "Siemens wants management salaries like in the US, corporate taxes like in Cyprus, and employee salaries like in China." The backlash has been so severe in Germany that politicians on both sides of the aisle have united to condemn what they consider a flagrant example of corporate greed. Given the outrage, Siemens' board has temporarily halted the implementation of the pay increase, and will put the $6.3 million saved into employee re-training for fired workers, but seems tone deaf to the ongoing fallout.