Boeing Wins $35 Billion Tanker Contract
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The Air Force has given a major boost to U.S. job creation by awarding a $35 billion contract to build the next generation of air refueling tankers to Boeing Co. The announcement was made at the Pentagon late this afternoon after the financial markets closed.
Boeing was locked in a competition with European-based EADS, which builds the Airbus, for what is the largest contract in Air Force history. Some 26,000 Boeing workers are represented by the Machinists (IAM) and SPEEA/International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 2001 represents more than 24,000.
Boeing said the tanker win would mean a total of 50,000 good union jobs across the country. The Air Force delayed the awarding of the tanker contract until after the November elections.
The Air Force has tried for nearly a decade to replace its aging fleet of Eisenhower-era tankers, the equivalent of a flying gas station.
Tanker Contract Would Create 44,000 Jobs in United States
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Remember the efforts by the Bush administration last year to tilt the competitive bid process in favor of giving a $35 billion contract to Airbus over Boeing?
Only after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) upheld Boeing’s protest of the Air Force’s decision to award the contract to EADS/Airbus and Northrop Grumman did Defense Secretary Robert Gates cancel the competition for the Air Force’s refueling tankers.
John Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, alerts us that the issue is back. In an op-ed in the Hartford Courant, Olsen points out that the French use billions of illegal subsidies to low-bid their contract proposal—and the Obama administration should insist the total value of any such Airbus subsidies are taken into account in the bidding to build the new tanker.
