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Boeing’s Carson: ‘job stability cannot be protected by words on paper’
Posted
at
11:57 am
by Michelle Dunlop
Anyone not get the message yet? Boeing does not intend to give guarantees for union jobs.
The company’s chief executive Jim McNerney addressed the topic in a memo to employees yesterday. And Scott Carson, president of commercial airplanes, likewise hit home the same point in his own message to workers.
“We have asked the union to work with us in finding ways to stabilize employment, but we cannot, nor would it be wise to, guarantee future employment in the face of stiff competition and a dynamic marketplace,” Carson wrote.
And if that didn’t clear things up, Fred Kiga, Boeing’s vice president of government and community relations, reiterated the point at the governor’s aerospace conference today.
Here’s the Machinists’ latest response, from the union’s Web page:
The fact is our members have bent over backwards for this Company to make them profitable. We have participated in every lean program, new initiative and offered alternative ideas - all to make them successful. We continue to bail them - when suppliers have problems and executives make bad decisions - such as ethical issues on the tanker, fixing outsourced parts that come in wrong, and working round-the-clock to fixed the flawed 787 production model (which has sent our members around the world to help correct these mistakes). It is our members who step up and get the job done for Boeing every time. We will continue to do that, but not at the price of our jobs.
No one wants a strike, but we have faced a Company determined to carry out the corporate greed that is rampant throughout corporate America. It is that same corporate mentality that is wreaking havoc on our financial markets. Who steps up to bail out these bad executive decisions on Wall Street? Again it is you - the workers. The same is true in our battle for a fair contract. We have stepped up every time and delivered for Boeing. It is time they deliver for us.
….
Boeing refuses to explore proposals on job security. The IAM is interested in written contract language that ensures that jobs historically performed by Machinist Union members in our factories will continue to be worked by IAM members. We are not interested in outside contractors performing our work in Boeing facilities, and we seek to compete for work Boeing finds necessary to outsource.
The Union acknowledges that some offset agreements are necessary for sales of the products. We also know that there is a vast amount of outsourced work not related to offsets that could be done more efficiently and less costly in house by the IAM if the IAM were given the opportunity to compete for that work when ALL factors - such as skills and ability of work force, labor costs, material costs, transportation costs, process improvements, delivery (cycle time) costs, rework costs, etc. are taken into consideration. The Union currently has the ability to compete for a very narrow scope of outsourced work, and we seek to broaden that scope.
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