Machinists union: Contract negotiations fall apart with Textron Aviation

Negotiations between the Machinists union and Textron Aviation not only fell apart Sunday, they ended with the company saying it will actively seek to outsource work to other states, a union official said Sunday.

A vote that had been scheduled for Wednesday at Hartman Arena will not take place, said Frank Molina, directing business representative for the Machinists District 70.

Talks have been ongoing to combine the two separate local unions of Beechcraft and Cessna Aircraft under a single labor agreement.

Textron, Cessna’s parent company, bought Beechcraft in March and formed Textron Aviation.

The deal breaker during negotiations this weekend was the union’s desire for the company to put in writing that it would keep jobs in Wichita, Molina said.

That’s the reason the company said it wanted to negotiate a single contract – job protection, he said.

“I told them this should be a no-brainer,” Molina said. “It goes to show how little the company thinks of the employees and Wichita.”

But Textron Aviation officials refused to put that in writing and walked out of the room without offering a proposal, he said.

“We were expecting a ‘last, best and final’ offer from the company today,” the union said in a statement. “Instead, they walked out of the room without proposing anything.”

In addition, “the first thing that comes out of this that they’re going to actively work to outsource work to other states,” Molina said. “They’re out there actively looking to outsource all of our work.”

A Textron Aviation spokeswoman said the company would not have a comment until Monday morning.

Both sides worked hard to get to an agreement, Molina said.

Last week, both sides said that negotiations were making progress in the contract talks.

“We’ve taken this very seriously,” Molina said.

“Our membership had given us strict instructions on what they wanted us to address,” he said. “We had given the company language that we wanted a commitment that the aircraft would be built in Wichita. .... We wanted it in black and white.”

A company official told the union’s negotiating team that it has been getting regular calls from Louisiana officials offering hefty incentives to move the work to that state, Molina said.

It’s also looking at other states, he said.

In 2010, news broke that Hawker Beechcraft reportedly had received incentives worth hundreds of millions of dollars from Louisiana to relocate the company to that state.

In response, the state of Kansas put together a $45 million, 10-year package of incentives to help keep the company in Wichita.

The union realizes that not everything will be built in Wichita.

But “they’ve outsourced a lot of our work already,” Molina said. “Over the last five years, they’ve pushed and outsourced a lot more of our work.”

Right now, “they’re sending more to Mexico,” he said. “Now they’re going to look at other locations to build our aircraft.”

Last week, the company sent out a memo asking for employees to go to Mexico to teach workers there how to build some of the parts done in Wichita, Molina said.

They’ve taught China how to paint airplanes, he said.

“I don’t take this lightly,” Molina said. “We heard what they said. They let us know they’re not interested in building aircraft in Wichita.”

The Machinists represent 2,494 hourly workers at Cessna under Local Lodge 774 and 1,627 hourly workers at Beechcraft under Local Lodge 733.

Beechcraft’s current five-year labor agreement expires in 2016; Cessna’s seven-year agreement expires in 2017.

Those agreements will remain in place, Molina said.

Under one contract, the company would be able to operate as a competitive and flexible unit, the two groups have said.

This story was originally published October 12, 2014 at 3:32 PM with the headline "Machinists union: Contract negotiations fall apart with Textron Aviation."