IAM members keep the presses – both secure and non-secure printing presses – running at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

Their job classifications are Machinists, Electro- Machinists, Sideographers, Machine Tool Operators, Plastarota Operators, Auto Mechanics, Locksmiths, and Apprentice Machinists.

What do plastarota operators do? They build up the rollers that imprint critical information on the dollar bill.

Are they absolutely indispensable? You decide.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces 37 million notes a day, that’s their lingo for greenbacks, with a face value of approximately $696 million.

That’s two and a half TRILLION dollars worth of notes a year!

All but five percent of the notes printed each year are used to replace notes already in circulation.

So, those secure printing presses better keep humming if this transcontinental economy is to continue to operate.


LL 1580, Wellsville, New York
One final example.

When the USS George H. W. Bush, the last of the Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers, puts to sea, its eight main propulsion turbines will be Machinist-made. Those turbines turn four propellers and, at full power, will drive the ship at almost 50 miles per hour.

An aircraft carrier weighs 97,000 tons and carries a crew of 6,000. Its eight turbines, producing 250,000 horsepower, will steam more than a million miles before the carrier’s reactors will be refueled.

If there were a Machinist-made label, they would be plastered from stem to stern of the USS George H. W. Bush and well beyond the horizon.

Sitting in its hangars or flying off its 4.5-acre flight deck are about eighty aircraft. Its squadrons of F/A Super Hornets and its        Av-8Bs are Machinist-made  at Boeing.

And slung under the wings of those F-18’s are J-DAMS, precision-guided bombs, also made by Machinists at Boeing.

Patrolling ten or more miles out from the USS George H.W. Bush will be Aegis destroyers, Machinist-made at Bath Iron Works.

Deep beneath the waves and far ahead of the aircraft carrier are hunter-killer submarines. Their periscopes are Machinist-made. Their weaponry is Machinist-made. Some of their communications links are Machinist-maintained.

And, when those nuclear submarines need to be refitted and repaired, guess who does that work? Machinists do.

Now the ultimate irony is that, when the task force led by the USS George H. W. Bush puts to sea in 2006, it will be defending a way of life that is slowly and inexorably disappearing for the very Machinists who built it.

Those IAM members may be absolutely indispensable to the launch of a new carrier, its squadrons of fighters, its arsenal of precision-guided-bombs, and the destroyers and submarines that form its defensive perimeter, but their skills are being lost to foreign nations as waves of downsizing, outsourcing, off-shoring and off-sets occurs.

Doing What's Right
For now, the IAM is North America’s Might.

Its 380,000 dues-paying members working under almost 4,000 separate contracts are acting as the timing chains of this transcontinental economy. In industry after industry and business after business, Machinists skills are so vital and varied that they cannot be readily or easily replaced.

That is the source of Machinist might. Our skills, our years of experience, our ability to acquaint ourselves with and adapt to new technology, our willingness to work hard and take pride in what we produce – all that and more is what gives us a unique power in this economy.

Add to that our specific worksites – at key junctions on production lines, railroad lines and airlines, at customer service counters and in front of reservation screens, in government agencies and military facilities, below fleet trucks or the chassis of a family’s car and you start to see why where we work is so crucial.  

Then imagine for a second that all those Machinists stopped what they were doing – for a minute, an hour, a day or a week – and you will get a sense of what absolutely indispensable really means.

Such a massive work   stoppage cannot and will   not occur, at least not by the       unilateral decision of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. It is not a weapon that the IAM has ever wielded.

It is, however, happening all across this continent. The weapon is being wielded by our foes, both foreign and domestic. They, not the Machinists, are shutting down worksite after worksite.

But there will come a day when doing what’s right means doing nothing at all.