March 26 -- FORT WORTH -- Lockheed Martin management and union officials squared off this morning at a Holiday Inn meeting room for the start of contract talks. Pension benefits, health care, outsourcing production and in-plant contract workers were chief among contentious issues.
Lockheed's current contract with District Lodge 776 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers expires April 22, giving negotiators 28 days. The contract covers assembly workers at the west Fort Worth plant, which produces the F-16 and F-35 fighter jets.
Tom Buffenburger, the machinists' Washington-based president, said the union hopes to prevent the Fort Worth plant from following the example of Lockheed units in Palmdale, Calif., and Marietta, Ga. There, enhanced retirement benefits were extended to older workers in exchange for them voting to end defined pension plans for new hires.
"It upset us very much that the membership would do that," Buffenburger said before talks began with the exchange of contract positions. In ad adjoining room, union members in identical green polo shirts sporting IAM logos watched the proceedings via a live video feed.
"We're not looking for a strike but if we have to protect the pensions we have that option," he said.
While Lockheed workers in California and Georgia voted out new pensions for their successors, the Machinists Union have stemmed, or at least stymied, the pattern in other contract talks, preserving pensions recently at Boeing, GKN Aerospace, Hawker Beechcraft and Goodrich Aerostructures, said Mark Blondin, an international union vice president.
"We're in a trend here," he said.
Management declined to comment before the start of contract talks.
Buffenburger said Lockheed had sharp negotiators well aware of an aging workforce that might be tempted to accept a "bump" in monthly pension payments in exchange for depriving the next generation of union employees from similar benefits.
Such tactics have ruptured families in an industry remarkable for the high percentage of workers who followed in the footsteps of parents and grandparents.
"We have fathers and sons at the workplace not talking to each other because the father voted against pensions," Buffenburger said. "It's divided the community, the workforce and families."
In Fort Worth, the union has mounted an education campaign, from talks on the factory floor to the Internet, to explain what was at stake over pensions, said Bob Martinez, the Arlington-based vice president of the machinists' southern territory. "We've come to the table prepared."
Martinez said the machinists want fewer non-union contract workers in the plant performing maintenance and is working to minimize outsourcing of production on Lockheed's military aircraft.
At Palmdale and Marietta, the IAM was able to resist the current health insurance plan being completely replaced by the company's own plan, which is the case for non-union employees, Buffenburger said. Instead, workers were given the choice of keeping their current plan or switching to what he said was the more expensive Lockheed plan. He said very few union members took the company plan.
Barry Shlachter, 817-390-7718
Twitter: @startelegram
Copyright 2012 - Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas
