Tanker Contract: Corporate Serfdom or Quality Jobs?

by Tula Connell, Oct 29, 2009

Corporate serf masters: same tactics, no matter what the century.

The governors of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama are pushing the U.S. Defense Department to award in 2010 a $35 billion to $40 billion tanker contract to European-owned EADS/Airbus rather than U.S.-based Boeing Corp.

In doing so, Republican Govs. Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal and Bob Riley are seeking to pit worker against worker, North against South, as a ploy to cover what’s really at stake: family-supporting jobs.

See, these governors loooove job creation in their states—as long as those jobs don’t pay much. Or offer affordable health insurance and retirement security. And especially as long as those jobs aren’t union.

If Boeing is awarded the contract for the refueling tanker aircraft, 44,000 family-supporting production jobs will be created across the country. In contrast, the few thousand jobs created under an EADS contract would be low-paid assembly jobs with no union protection.

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