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.
Pennsylvania Union Members Donate Time, Labor, Money to Help Children
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Union members care about their communities, and one of the biggest ways they show it is through the Community Services Network, which provides services and assistance to those in need. Last week, the Pennsylvania union movement showed its heart when members dedicated a new union-built picnic pavilion at the Auberle Center, a faith-based agency dedicated to helping abused, neglected and troubled children and families.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker was on hand to dedicate the pavilion, constructed free-of-charge by members and apprentices of the Carpenters union. Some of the youth at the center helped build the pavilion and two have asked to join the Carpenter’s apprenticeship program, says Joe Delale, community services liaison for the Allegheny County (Pa.) Labor Council.
Holt Baker praised the union members’ generosity:
I am reminded of a quote from Bobby Kennedy who said:
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
It is in small acts that greatness is truly borne, and the work you have done here today reflects that greatness.
UTU Leader Picked to Head Federal Railroad Administration
Joe Szabo, United Transportation Union’s (UTU’s) Illinois state legislative director and a vice president of the Illinois AFL-CIO, was nominated last week by President Obama to serve as head of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). A Senate confirmation vote is expected soon.
The FRA administers and enforces federal rail safety laws and writes and enforces federal rail safety regulations.
Szabo is a fifth-generation railroader who began work with the Illinois Central in 1976 as a yard switchman and also worked as a road trainman and commuter passenger conductor. He was elected UTU Local 1290 secretary-treasurer in 1984 and began serving as UTU state legislative director in 1996. UTU President Mike Futhey says Szabo is
the first FRA administrator to come out of the ranks of rail labor. It is a validation that the Obama administration is a friend of organized labor.
