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Showing posts with label Boeing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boeing. Show all posts
Friday, April 4, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
United Mechanics, Now Teamsters, Challenge Outsourcing of Jobs
From the International Brotherhood of Teamsters:
United Airlines mechanics overwhelmingly chose the Teamsters Union as their collective bargaining representative by a vote of 4,113-2,631, the National Mediation Board announced Monday. The 9,300 active and furloughed mechanics who comprise the bargaining unit will become Teamsters as soon as the NMB vote is certified. The board is expected to certify the vote by close of business Tuesday.
The Teamsters victory culminates a two-year effort by United mechanics and related personnel to gain strong representation. A key issue was the failure of their former bargaining representative, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, to hold United to its contractual obligation to limit outsourcing.
“We’re thrilled that United mechanics voted to join our union by such a large margin,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “United mechanics will now have the Teamsters strength behind them in their fight against outsourcing to foreign repair stations.”
In educational interest, article(s) quoted from extensively.
Continuing:
“United has cut more maintenance positions than any other U.S. airline,” Hoffa said, noting that United outsourced 45 percent of its aircraft maintenance expenses in 2006, three times the amount it outsourced in 1998. Hoffa also said the Teamsters would support the mechanics in their efforts to curb excessive executive compensation and restore their own retirement security.
“We’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with United mechanics as they try to rein in management greed and hold them accountable for foisting their pension obligations on U.S. taxpayers,” Hoffa said. “After two years of hard work, we now have the opportunity to work with the strength of a true union behind us to secure our futures,” said Rich Petrovsky, chairman of the Committee for Change, which spearheaded the organizing campaign.
The United victory is the latest in a series of organizing triumphs for the Teamsters. In the past three months, the Teamsters organized nearly 10,000 workers at UPS Freight since Jan. 16. ...There are 40,000 Teamsters airline employees, including more than 9,000 mechanics and related at 11 airlines.
The outsourcing issue as it pertains to aircraft maintenance reared its head earlier in the month as United was forced to ground seven of its Boeing 747 aircraft. Hoffa released a statement at the time, saying:
Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said he is disturbed by reports that six United Airlines Boeing 747s were grounded on Thursday because of errors by a foreign repair station. The jumbo jets were grounded after it was discovered that improper pitot static testers—equipment used to test gauges that provide air data, such as the altimeter—were used by the facility to which United outsources its heavy maintenance in Busan, S. Korea.
“This just shows how risky it is to send airplanes offshore to be repaired,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “Overseas repair stations simply don’t meet the same standards as U.S. repair stations. The FAA should no longer allow U.S. airlines to send their repairs overseas.”
Supervisors and inspectors who sign off on maintenance work at foreign repair stations are not required to hold either a Federal Aviation Administration repairman certificate or an Airframe and/or Powerplant certificate, nor are the mechanics working on the aircraft at these facilities. According to the FAA’s database, the South Korea repair station has only one certificated mechanic out of 38 employees.
The Transportation Department’s inspector general has reported that the Federal Aviation Administration’s oversight of foreign repair stations is uneven. Only 103 FAA inspectors (including management staff) are responsible for inspecting 692 foreign repair stations. Limited staff and travel budgets, and passport and visa controls, make unannounced inspections of these facilities virtually impossible.
“This incident is especially alarming, given that United has cut more maintenance positions than any other U.S. airline,” Hoffa said. ... United CEO Glenn Tilton proposed in August 2007 the sale of UAL’s maintenance division, including its heavy maintenance base in San Francisco, which employs more than 4,000 mechanics.
Even more bad news arrived for United today, as Andy Pasztor reports for the Wall Street Journal:
United Airlines has found wiring improperly connected to the main landing gear of three of its Airbus A320s, which company and government officials believe caused a pair of nonfatal runway accidents. ...
U.S. accident investigators and airline officials are focusing on test procedures developed years ago by the plane's manufacturer, the Airbus unit of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., to determine whether the landing gear is wired correctly. They are trying to determine whether the crossed wiring was missed because of mistakes by mechanics or because the test procedures are inadequate.
The debate also has raised questions about whether using outside mechanics contributed to United's troubles. United said it is cooperating with safety regulators. An Airbus spokesman said the company has no plans to change the test procedures.
The issue heated up after a United A320 skidded off the runway while landing at the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, airport in late February, smashing into a snow bank but causing no injuries. United had a similar landing accident four months earlier, with two minor injuries, when one of its A320s briefly veered off a runway at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and destroyed some runway lights. The third miswired plane wasn't involved in an accident, company officials said.
The February accident sparked industry interest once investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board said that improperly connected wiring most likely caused the jetliner's antiskid system to malfunction, although no formal finding has been made. The plane slid off the runway the same month maintenance had been performed on its landing gear by outside mechanics, according to company officials. The airline has since done multiple inspections of its A320 landing-gear wiring, using methods that are more extensive than those developed previously by Airbus, according to people familiar with the details.
The incidents have prompted an industry debate over how the miswiring took place and whether tests to verify the wiring are sufficient.
More on the UAL outsourcing fight from Chicago Tribune:
[D]uring 2005 and 2006 the carrier exceeded by nearly $480 million its agreement to keep such work in-house. The UAL Corp. subsidiary's contract with the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association contains a clause that establishes a cap on how much work UAL can outsource. The union said it had retained an auditor to review whether United has been complying with its limit.
A review by the auditor found that United during 2005 exceeded the agreed-to limit by nearly $200 million, the union contended, and in 2006 the airline spent $280 million more than the contract allowed on outsourced maintenance.
"UAL's continued insistence on ignoring their excessive outsourcing damages the already strained relationship with UAL maintenance employees," AMFA Local 9 President Joseph Prisco said in a statement.Prisco, whose union represents more than half of United's mechanics, said that since 2001 the number of "mechanics and related staff" at United has dropped to 5,600 from 15,000.
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