OT: Another Labor Union Chooses Death (kinda long)

RonB · 2010-10-24T17:24:57+00:00

The Machinists and Aerospace Workers of Wichita chose death overcontinued employment last week. With General Aviation feeling thebrunt of a double blow (cyclic sales downturn + record-poor economy)Hawker Beechcraft has been struggling to stay afloat. The company andWichita have been working together to forge an economic incentivepackage to keep the old Beechcraft in Wichita. The company announceda couple of weeks ago that they would keep most operations in Wichitaif the Union would ratify an agreement to accept some wage and benefitdecreases - Otherwise, they had standing plans and offers to move.The city of Wichita strongly urged the membership to accept the offer,because Beech had already outsourced a significant amount of work toMexico; and a Louisiana location was strongly courting the company forthe 'full meal deal' - complete buyout of operations. The rumor millis also indicating that a major defense company is poised to buy someof their lucrative training and defense work.Guess what - the union said no!Guess what else - The company announced this morning that most of itsremaining Wichita backshop and subassembly operations would be movedto Mexico during the January through August 2011 time frame.Immediate effect - 900 jobs, not counting 350 salaried workers thatwere laid off this Friday. If the Louisiana deal works out, Beech,one of the founding companies of Wichita's aircraft manufacturinglegacy, could be gone in a matter of 1-2 more years. For those whoyell "company greed" I would add that several of the executivemanagement team have invested millions from their pockets to help thecompany develop new products during this downturn. They have alsoaccepted the same pay and benefit cuts proposed to the union.Do these people not own televisions, radios or subscribe tonewspapers? They are converting Wichita from "Aircraft Capital of theWorld" to "Food Stamp Capital of Kansas"; and they are taking hundredsof salaried engineers, technicians and business ad...

Oct 24, 2010 22 Replies

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dpb 15 years ago

Nahmie wrote: ...

Indeed; that's partly my point--_if_ H-B really did want this agreement, it doesn't seem they could have chosen a more unlikely way to go about trying to get it.

I was gone for a while so didn't see absolutely every day's reporting but afaik union leadership did recommend accepting even with reservations but would have preferred to put off the vote pending further negotiation but H-B said "take it or leave it as is; voting will be such_and_such date".

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