Hundreds Protest "Tanker Travesty"

More than 300 Boeing Machinist (IAM) and Engineers (SPEEA), surrounded by a phalanx of elected officials, called on the Air Force yesterday to get a reality check on their decision to send American jobs, national security and trade secrets to a foreign competitor in the form of the $40 billion re-fueling tanker contract.

 The “Tanker Travesty,” as the deal has been referred to, is the decision by the Air Force to award EADS/Airbus and their minority (or some call it shell) partner, Northrop Grumman, a contract to replace the entire US fleet of refueling tankers. Boeing, the American company that has been producing defense aircraft (including the original fleet of air re-fueling tankers), for the past 75 years, has initiated an appeal to the Government Accountability Office on the grounds that the proposal was altered, after the bids were in, to favor the foreign competitor.  

U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) has been leading the charge in the Senate to call attention to the unfair bidding process. Murray said that the decision must be reversed in order to ensure America ’s national security, to keep 44,000 high skilled jobs here in the US and to preserve our country’s Aerospace Industry.  

“We have a reputation for delivering for our military. We have a workforce that is ready to build an airplane on day one – they have a paper airplane,” said Murray referring to the fact that EADS/Airbus has never even built a tanker. EADS has not even begun to build the facility, which they plan to place in Alabama , a right to work state, where they can get the cheapest labor possible.  

Washington State Labor Council President Rick Bender asked the crowd, “Are you as angry about this tanker deal as I am?” Bender pointed out that the culprit, who has been working behind the scenes for the last five years to ensure that EADS/Airbus got the contract, is none other that Republican Presidential nominee John McCain. McCain not only lobbied for the foreign company to get the job, two of his high-ranking campaign officials were hired as lobbyists by EADS to get the deal done. Bender also pointed out that McCain has taken tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from EADS.  

“I think this calls for a Senate Ethics Committee investigation,” said Bender to thundering applause.  

US Representative Rick Larson told the crowd that the only way EADS/Airbus operates is with subsidies that the US says are illegal. In fact, even as the $40 billion contract is being handed over, the US is aggressively pursuing legal action against EADS at the World Trade Organization for getting grants and loans at unfairly favorable rates in the form of “launch aid.”  

Awarding the tanker deal to EADS/Airbus has been called one of the worst procurement decisions to have been made in recent history. At a practical level, according to WA State Governor Chris Gregoire, the plane’s design is too big to fit in the hangers in which the National Guard houses the current tankers – every single hanger will have to be rebuilt. Also, the plane is too heavy to land on runways scattered across the world and all the maintenance areas will have to be retrofitted to house the larger aircraft. The fuel consumption by the larger, less efficient foreign tanker is estimated to cost the US an extra $30 billion and that is at today’s prices – who knows how much more oil will increase by the time these planes are built.

Once the paper airplane actually gets into the build-mode, the EADS plan is to spread the jobs all across Europe, in different countries, and then finally fly or ship the parts to the US for them to be assembled in a yet-to-be-built plant in Alabama . Even Boeing outsourcing has not been done on this massive a scale. One has to wonder how EADS plans to pull this off especially in the light of the $446 million dollar loss they posted in 2007 and the fact that they have yet to hire the 1500 workers to do the plane’s final assembly.  These are high skilled jobs done by professionals. Right now even Boeing is scrambling to find trained workers in the aerospace industry.

Boeing Machinists undergo security checks, background clearances and understands the importance of national security when it comes to defense work. Questions have arisen about the assumption that French, German and Spanish workers, as well as other immigrants who are hired on to build the scattered parts of this crucial piece of weaponry prior to its final assembly, will be vetted in the same way.  

Senator Murray also questioned the sensibility in allowing all the foreign countries working on the EADS plane to have access to the plans and design of the aircraft. In a meeting after the rally Murray pointed out that US vulnerability will increase sharply if EADS, who is under no obligation to keep our military secrets secret, shares the tanker design with countries who now have no refueling tanker capability. She asked how long will it be before Iran or Pakistan acquire the knowledge and capability to manufacture their own tanker so that their military planes, which don’t have the capacity to reach the US now, suddenly have the US in their sites?

The Machinists, SPEEA and the entire NW Congressional and State delegation present at the rally vowed to fight this "Tanker Travesty." They urged the unions to get members and non-members from around the country to contact their US legislators to help them understand the importance of reversing this contract decision.  This confounding decision, the delegation says, has broad, perhaps disastrous implications for our national security, the job base throughout America and for the entire aerospace industry as it exists to defend our nation.