Labor & Employment Law

Tanker Contract Delayed Until After Election?50,000 Jobs at Stake

By James Parks

When some voters cast their ballots next week, their decisions will determine whether  nearly 50,000 jobs in 40 states are created. The U.S. aerospace company Boeing is locked in a competition with European-based EADS, which builds the Airbus, for what is the largest contract in Air Force history. If Boeing’s bid wins, the company will immediately create tens of thousands of good union jobs to build the tanker.  The Air Force has delayed the awarding of the $35 billion tanker contract until after the November elections. With some key members of Congress up for re-election, the choices voters in Washington and a few other states make will help determine whether Boeing or EADS gets the tanker.  

EADS claims it will build its tanker in a nonexistent nonunion factory in Alabama. But the bulk of the work will be done in Europe. Click on the video link above to see why Boeing?s workers are ready to start building the tanker now, while EADS is banking on a field of dreams.  

Two of Boeing?s biggest supporters, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) are up for re-election. If Republicans gain control of the House, Dicks would lose his post as chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, where he has been a powerful and outspoken advocate of Boeing?s bid for the contract. The new chairman could be the ranking Republican, Rep. C.W. bill Young (R-Fla.), who has voted wrong 77 percent of the time on workers’ issues, according to the AFL-CIO Voting Record.     

During a rally in June, Tom Wroblewski, president and directing business representative for Machinists  (IAM) Lodge 751, paid tribute to the generations of union workers who have built and maintained America?s fleet of refueling tankers since the Eisenhower administration.

Our workers are capable and ready to start today. Together with the engineers of SPEEA, our partners at Boeing and the supplier chain, we are ready to deliver the finest and most advance technology to our men and women in uniform.

Elected officials, community leaders, business and labor showed their support at the rally to ensure the tanker is ?Made in America.? Dicks, along with fellow representatives, Jay Inslee, Jim McDermott and Rick Larsen, all Washington State Democrats, each pledged to back Boeing?s bid through the Air Force award process.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 26, 2010 (boomark / email).