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Hawker Beechcraft's Wichita facility will not get work from the company's Salina plant, which is closing.
Instead, the company told Machinists union officials that half of the work will go to Hawker Beechcraft's plant in Mexico and the rest will go to outside suppliers and vendors, Steve Rooney, the union's District 70 president, said Monday.
Salina employees — who build wings, spar assemblies and other assemblies — will be told the news this morning, Rooney said.
Hawker Beechcraft employs about 240 people in Salina, down from about 500 a year ago.
Hawker Beechcraft spokeswoman Nicole Alexander confirmed Monday evening that half the jobs would go to Mexico and half to outside vendors and suppliers.
The move "must make business sense, which is crucial during these times," Alexander said.
Company officials have said they must cut costs to compete with emerging competition globally and to position themselves for an eventual upturn in the aviation market.
In November, Hawker Beechcraft officials told employees that the Salina facility would close as the company consolidates.
At the time, Hawker Beechcraft officials said moving the jobs to Wichita would be the company's first preference, and they would work with the union to try to make a business case to bring them here. But that didn't work out, Alexander said.
Of Salina's hourly work force, 179 jobs had the possibility of coming to Wichita, Rooney said. And employees would have had the opportunity to move with them, he said.
Moving work to Mexico is a troubling trend, union officials say.
"Will our children be crossing that border in search of a job — any job?" is printed on a flier being distributed today by the union to its members in response to an Eagle story Sunday about global outsourcing in the aviation industry. "Will there be border guards with orders to keep out the American illegals?"
Sending work to low-wage countries is a misguided move, Rooney said. Wichita aircraft workers are productive, innovative, experienced and the best at what they do, he said.
The jobs are important to the city, the state and the country, Rooney said.
"These are jobs worth fighting for," Rooney said. "What's going to happen when they all leave here?"
Outsourcing is not only a union issue, he said. It will take local, state and national governments working together to keep jobs in Wichita and in the country, Rooney said.
High health care costs — which drive up the cost of doing business in the U.S. —must be addressed, and trade agreements must be changed to be made fair, he said.
Mexico and China, he said, don't have to comply with regulations similar to those in the U.S., such as those from the Environmental Protection Agency.
"I believe we can compete with anybody if we're on a level playing field," Rooney said.
Lower-skilled jobs remain important to Wichita. Those jobs teach employees the aviation business and give them the groundwork to move into higher-skilled jobs, said Machinists spokesman Bob Wood.
"We have a tribal knowledge here that is indispensable when you're doing things like building airplanes," Wood said.
Hourly employees represented by the Machinists are willing to work with the company to improve processes and increase productivity, but the company doesn't want to listen, Rooney said.
He said workers also are afraid that if they do find solutions to reduce costs, their jobs would be shipped outside the country anyway, he said.
It's what happened after workers at Raytheon Aircraft — the predecessor to Hawker Beechcraft — improved the way they built wire harnesses in Wichita, Rooney said. After coming up with improvements, the work eventually went to Mexico, he said.
