For Release: Wednesday, March 12, 2008

UAW supports Boeing protest on flawed tanker contract

Detroit - The award of a $35 billion U.S. Air Force contract to a European-based company is "a bad deal for U.S. taxpayers," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said today.

"UAW members fully support Boeing's decision to challenge this award before the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress," Gettelfinger said.

"Instead of buying a tested refueling tanker, made in America by American workers, the Air Force is proposing to spend billions of our tax dollars on an untested plane, to be built by a government-subsidized European consortium," Gettelfinger said.

The Air Force announced on Feb. 29 that it would award a contract for a new refueling tanker to a consortium led by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) and Northrup Grumman. The EADS/Northrup Grumman plane will be manufactured in Europe and then "finished" in a facility, not yet constructed, to be located in Huntsville, Ala.

"Why should our tax dollars be used to send jobs to Europe, and then subsidize the construction of a new plant when we've got existing plants and existing workers who can do this job?" said UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles, who directs the union's Aerospace Department. "This decision puts 40,000 good-paying U.S. manufacturing jobs at risk -- but it does not deliver a better product to our military."

EADS and Northrup Grumman won the contract, Settles noted, even though neither company has ever built a tanker with a refueling boom. Boeing, by contrast, has been building refueling tankers for the U.S. military for more than 75 years.

"Boeing's proposal is for a plane which is smaller and can land at more military bases," said Jim Wells, director of UAW Region 5, home to thousands of UAW-represented aerospace workers and their families. "Boeing's plane is more fuel-efficient, has lower emissions, and already fits with 99 percent of the Air Force's existing equipment.

"We look forward to the GAO investigation," said Wells, "because the U.S. military and U.S. taxpayers are not served well by this decision."

The UAW, one of the nation's largest and most diverse labor unions, represents more than one million active and retired workers, including about 4,000 workers at Boeing and its supplier firms in California and Oklahoma.