IAM members in Wichita, KS launched a “Grow Kansas” campaign against Raytheon’s plans to outsource aerospace jobs.

Aerospace — 4

These communication components begin with a shop-wide survey of our members to identify their issues and contribute greatly to our successful negotiations within the aerospace industry.

Overall, between the years of 2000 to 2004 the Aerospace Department coordinators have negotiated over 180 agreements covering IAM aerospace workers in North America.

Healthcare and job loss issues are continuing to be an ongoing battle at our negotiating tables. This has mandated that we extend our efforts to the Legislative forum to address the onslaught of abuses by greedy and corrupt employers who continue to circumvent the current laws which were originally intended to protect North American workers.

Delegates attending the 2003 Aerospace Conference held in Hartford, Connecticut concluded the solutions to the challenges we face concerning our Union’s, and our nation’s healthcare and job security problems lie in membership involvement and community mobilization to bring about a political change.

To that end we began the development of “Grow” campaigns in Connecticut and Kansas, with a similar program in Washington State. Through these campaigns, we will hold our elected legislators and corporations accountable and support the needs of workers in our respective nations.

In recognition of the recent challenges we face from a stagnant economy, the tragedy and aftereffects of 9/11, a changing industry, foreign competition, our employers contracting our work offshore and the resulting declining membership we have to defend our jobs.

We have come to recognize it can no longer be business as usual. We must defend our jobs; JOBS Worth Fighting For!

We must aggressively continue to organize the second and third tier employers, seek political solutions to the wholesale loss of our jobs to overseas manufactures and continue to expand our already successful efforts in the Service Contract Act arena.