Thursday, July 8, 2010

Friday, June 25, 2010

June 25 2010

The Membership has Voted to Reject the Company's offer By 57% and vote to strike by 58%
but LESS THAN TWO-THIRDS vote to strike, the contract is automatically accepted by default. Our Constitution requires a 66.6% majority to reaffirm the Strike Sanction. There will be no strike.
The new agreement goes in to effect at 12:01 am.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Bloomberg News Article

(Updates with union’s comments starting in fifth paragraph.)

By Susanna Ray

June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc.’s machinists will vote on a 10-year labor contract on June 25 that may set a standard for longer-term agreements with companies such as Boeing Co., the workers’ union said.

Labor contracts in the aerospace industry usually span three to four years. The tentative agreement with the Wichita, Kansas-based aircraft-parts maker is “precedent-setting” and contains “the strongest job security language in the industry,” the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said in a statement today.

Spirit Aero Chief Executive Officer Jeff Turner and the president of the union, Tom Buffenbarger, began meeting in January to lay the framework for longer accords that protect employees while giving companies flexibility. Buffenbarger has said he hopes the agreement will be a model for other suppliers and planemakers, including Boeing, which has seen two strikes since 2008 and is facing a third next week.

If approved, the contract would be “the first of its kind in the industry, the first of its kind in the nation,” IAM Local Lodge 839 said in a letter today to its 5,900 members announcing the details of the agreement reached yesterday.

“We have 10,000 aircraft workers in Wichita laid off, we’re having outsourcing to Mexico and other states and plant closures across the industry,” said IAM spokesman Bob Wood.

“We think this could be a new model for other aerospace contracts we have in Wichita and elsewhere, like Boeing, because we’re tired of seeing jobs fly away.”

Incentive-Based Raises

Machinists would get pension improvements through the entire contract; medical costs that will be kept “in check;”

salary increases that are more incentive-based and are linked to progress toward goals similar to those set for senior management; and 150 shares of stock, Wood said.

The company, in turn, gets labor stability, the flexibility needed to adapt to changing demand and a new performance-based reward system that’s a first for the IAM and will keep costs from escalating beyond market norms, said Spirit spokesman Ken Evans.

“This is a whole new kind of relationship where we’ve got both parties focused on positive improvement versus on renegotiating the next contract in three years,” Evans said.

“We’re talking about a 10-year contract with no strikes, and you can imagine what a big selling tool that’s going to be for customers.”

Spirit Aero makes sections of every Boeing model, including the entire fuselage for the 737, so profit was hurt by a two- month strike by Boeing machinists in 2008 that shuttered the planemaker’s factories. Boeing last year cited labor stability as the reason behind its decision to build a new assembly plant in South Carolina, where workers can’t be forced to join unions, instead of at its historical Seattle-area manufacturing hub.

Tentative Agreement Info

Available at the LL 839 website, LL839.org.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Contract Vote information


Click on flyer for large size

June 22 6:40 pm Update

Brothers and Sisters

Your Negotiating Team has reached a tentative agreement. Your Negotiating Team has sent it to the printer and as soon as it has been printed it will be in the shops for distribution.

In Solidarity,
Your Negotiating Team