Sunday, June 17, 2012

Lockheed To Replace Strikers At F-35 Fighter Plane Plant

The Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas that builds F-35 fighter jets, in a March 2010 image. Reuters

Lockheed Is Replacing Strikers at Fighter Plane Plant -- New York Times

Lockheed Martin said Friday that it had hired 300 temporary workers to replace striking union employees at its fighter plane plant in Fort Worth and could hire hundreds more.

About 3,300 union workers went on strike there on April 23 over proposed changes in health benefits and a Lockheed plan to stop offering a traditional pension to newly hired workers.

The factory builds the new F-35 strike fighter aircraft as well as an older model, the F-16, for foreign countries. The company has used salaried workers to keep building the planes at a slower rate. It started bringing in the temporary workers in late May.

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My Comment:
This labor problem will only add to the cost of the F-35 program. As for the workers who are on strike .... I do not know where they are getting their confidence that they will win .... because from where I am standing .... they are positioned to lose big time.

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