Airbus Production moved to USA

Airbus’ new American facility is is expected to open early in 2016. Airbus has moved into the North American commercial airliner market looking to match Boeing’s market share. The new facility will allow Airbus to assemble the European made component parts into aircraft for the North American market, currently the world’s largest.

By locating final production in the US, Airbus also obtains an opportunity to market military products to the US government and Space Program which have preference for buying US made products. A report in the Seattle Times newspaper states:

It’s an aggressive move, considering the European plane-maker controls only about 20 percent of the U.S. market. That share will reach 40 percent as soon as carriers including American Airlines take delivery of Airbus planes on order.

Bregier’s team has set its sights on grabbing half a U.S. market that has traditionally favoured the home player, even as the two manufacturers share the global market 50/50. “We are a large aerospace company, and should the situation arise where we have something competitive to offer the U.S. Air Force, for instance, this would certainly be a site where we’d consider doing something,” Enders said in a televised interview.

Break the workers

Airbus has located its new facility in the gulf coast port of Mobile in the southern state of Alabama. Alabama is a “right to work” State where laws encourage workers not to join unions. But Alabama is far from the worst of the Southern states for union membership

“Union members are 10.8 percent of [Alabama’s] workforce, federal statistics show, compared with 2.2 percent in South Carolina and 16.8 percent in Washington State, where rival Boeing Co has Jetliner factories. Boeing’s South Carolina plant is not unionized.”

Business news site “Bloomberg News” states: «By locating its plant in low-cost, union-unfriendly Alabama, Airbus “puts pressure on trade unions back in Europe,” aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafi told Agency France-Presse. Boeing’s factory in South Carolina, which recently a unionization drive, serves a similar function relative to the company’s unionized plants around Seattle. Hourly pay for durable-goods-manufacturing workers for all U.S. nonfarm workers for the first time on record last November. Aircraft production workers have been a holdout, with an average hourly wage of $37.90 in June, but that could change».

Trade Unions at breaking point

The major union for airplane construction is the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). IAM was founded in 1888 and has around 700,000 members in Canada and the United States, 333,000 who are currently working in the industry. A member of the only national union structure, the AFL-CIO, IAM leadership runs the union as a “business partner” with the employers. For the aerospace companies IAM will lobby US Congress for lucrative military contracts. To get an idea of their class collaborationist policies here is the president of IAM appealing to the management of Airbus: «We tell (Airbus) that we are the leading aerospace union in the North America and we would like to get off on the right foot and organize their workers,” Buffenbarger said. “We can bring order in the workplace: We are a union with a demonstrated history of trying to work out problems and to create an efficient operation, just as Boeing became more proficient because of its skilled workforce. We can help make them successful, or we can have a knock-down, drag-out fight».

Like most US unions IAM signs contracts with no-strike clauses. However in between IAM will strike to protect its members’ interests, the last time against Boeing in 2008:

On Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008, members of the union ratified the contract, ending the eight-week strike. The new contract was approved by 74 percent of those voting in favor. This was the longest strike against Boeing by this union since 1995, and the fourth in twenty years. The strike cost the union members an average of $7000.00 in base pay and cost the company $100 million per day in revenue and penalties with a postponement of the delivery of aircraft. Boeing has a $350 billion backlog.

Members Trying to Take Back the IAM?

Until 2015, the IAM had no contested elections for national leadership in 50 years and President for 110 years.

After the IAM International union forced a concessionary contract on the Washington State centred Boeing workers, a campaign to reform IAM campaign formed around a worker’s Facebook group. The social-democratic union reform magazine “Labor Notes” reports: «The current reform effort is based on a program to 1) eliminate nepotism 2) lower spending e.g. a Lear Jet for international officers and lower salaries ($304,000 in total compensation for President Thomas Buffenbarger), and the numbers of international officers».

Reform candidates received about 1⁄3 of the votes in that historic contested IAM Presidential election. There doesn’t appear to be any other organized opposition.

Back to the Basics

These efforts of a handful of rank and file members to take on a well entrenched union oligarchy are applauded. However, the group will need to take on and fight concessions as well as how to organize in the southern states and elsewhere. They are fighting deeply ingrained class collaborationist organizational and educational institutions that undermine the union.

The ideological weaknesses of being willing to work with the employers will take more than a change of leadership to root out. It takes an active, educated and fighting rank and file base. The International Communist Party offers IAM members an understanding of capitalism and experience in rank and file struggle that will aid in that effort.