Aerospace


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Alan Mulally addressing a business school breakfast last March suggested that those complaining about changes at Boeing should “stop whining.”

Slashing Jobs in Aerospace
In an email to Boeing employees, Chairman Phil Condit recited America the Beautiful. His timing, if not his tone, seemed a bit bizarre. It came as IAM members began voting on a contract that shredded hard-won job security protections, gouged members on health care costs and provided paltry pension increases.

Over 62 percent of the IAM membership rejected the contract and 61 percent voted to strike. Yet, the strike vote fell 5 percentage points shy of the two-thirds majority required by the IAM Constitution.

While Condit sang in the stratosphere, his heir apparent promised to “trash the place.” Alan Mulally, the head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, was as good as his word — at least in this one instance. He trashed years of painstaking economic progress for IAM members and their communities with an eleventh hour about face.

On the key issue of job security, Alan Mulally’s Contract lets Boeing:

• Sidestep the 180 day notice needed to subcontract union work and avoid ways to keep the work in-house.

• Bring outside vendors and subcontractors onto the  floor and slash IAM jobs.

• Appoint “team leaders” to push hundreds of union “leads” into lower paying jobs and save jobs for managers.

 Alan Mulally’s Contract shifts health care costs to IAM families and tweaks pension benefits. Some IAM members may pay out over $5,000 for  additional medical coverage between now and 2005.

By then, pension benefits will be $60 per month per year of service. Even now, IAM members can retire using an ‘alternative’ benefit averaging $55 per month per year of service.

“The framework for a better contract existed on that final day of mediation. But Allan Mulally could not deliver on his own promises. For Boeing stock holders and customers, it is an unnerving example of weak leadership,” said IAM President Tom Buffenbarger   

“Alan Mulally wrote this contract and he’ll have to live with it. He had a chance to follow in Phil Condit’s footsteps. He chose not to. He lowered his own and his company’s prospects,” Buffenbarger concluded.