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.
Defense Employees Celebrate Repeal of Anti-Worker Personnel System
After a tough six-year battle, U.S. Department of Defense employees are celebrating a major victory today. The 2010 Defense authorization congressional conference committee yesterday repealed the anti-worker National Security Personnel System (NSPS).
Created by the Bush administration, the NSPS was fatally flawed from the beginning. The personnel system took away Defense Department workers’ right to collective bargaining and personnel appeals. After the last Republican-led Congress refused to block the NSPS, the United Department of Defense Workers Coalition (UDWC) worked tirelessly to restore fairness and equity to the workplace. Members of the coalition, made up of the 36 unions that represent Defense Department workers, helped get out the vote to ensure a Democratic majority in Congress and that majority restored the Defense workers’ collective bargaining rights as part of the 2009 Defense authorization bill.
NFFE’s Richard Brown Dies at 47: ‘A Trade Unionist at Heart’
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Richard N. Brown, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), died yesterday in Arlington, Va. He was 47 years old.
Brown served as president of the 100,000-member NFFE since 1998. The union represents blue- and white-collar federal workers in more than 30 federal departments and agencies. The NFFE was founded in 1917 and affiliated with the Machinists (IAM) in 1990.
NFFE Secretary-Treasurer Bill Dougan says Brown was “a strong leader, a dedicated trade unionist, and a friend.”
Rick was a trade unionist at heart. He came from a union family and maintained membership in NFFE-IAM and the Laborers Union (LIUNA), the latter being a membership he maintained after leaving construction to become a machinist. Rick was a strong advocate for federal employees. Never one to back down, Rick was a strong presence in the fight against several federal workforce initiatives aimed at contracting out federal government jobs and eliminating federal employees’ unions.
In his passing, we have lost a strong voice and champion for working men and women. We will mourn his loss greatly.
