I see the WTO finally came down with their ruling on EADS that they have been thinking about and processing for what seems like most of the millennium. It's really bad for EADS, and really good for Boeing.
Normally I wouldn't be interested in this kind of thing, but my old union is the International Assocation of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and there are still many thousands of good union jobs at Boeing. The other thing about this issue is that I remain clueless why this country doesn't have a stronger Buy America policy, something virtually every other industrialized country has some stronger version of, and I couldn't fathom why we would be contracting with foreign manufacturers to make something as important as a new fleet of tankers for the military. The competition between Boeing and EADS thus caught my eye, and I ended up getting involved on behalf of Boeing and my old IAMAW friends. I think it is a critically important issue not only for the short term jobs it will create, but for helping maintain and rebuild America's industrial base.
The ruling today is strong, it's 100% clearcut, it leaves absolutely no question marks: EADS has been cheating its ass off. Rewarding the tanker contract to Boeing should be an easy call for the Obama administration.
I have been working with Boeing and my friends at the Machinists (my old union) on this tanker contract issue, and a couple of recent items on this are worth noting, especially in combination. The first is that Boeing has paid for a new study that says they would generate 70,000 new American jobs if they get the tanker contract. You have to take any study paid for by a company with a grain of salt, so maybe it’s not 70,000 jobs, maybe it’s less than that, but even if it’s 20% or 30% less, that’s a good chunk of new jobs that would go to American workers, practically immediately, as opposed to all the non-American jobs that would be created if Airbus got the contract.
What caught my eye in combination with this news, though, is this item: Patty Murray recently had a meeting with Boeing CEO Jim McNerney where she asked point blank where the new Air Force tanker will be built if Boeing gets the contract. The answer was straightforward: the Everett, WA facilities. Everett is a fully unionized plant by the Machinists. Those are good jobs, with good wages and good benefits. Most of the jobs created by an Airbus contract, even though they are affiliated on it with Northrop, will be outside of this country, while the few that would be directly created at an non-union American plant yet to be built in Alabama.
Seems like a pretty obvious choice to me. Good American jobs – 70,000 if Boeing is right – that have union wages and benefits versus mostly non-American jobs with only a smattering of non-union American jobs at a plant yet to be even built. This should be an easy call – politically and policy-wise.
I just got back from a country where everybody seems pretty happy with their health care system, Canada. It was a little weird to hear people talking about dealing with health care without anyone bitching about insurance companies, or being warned about what would happen to their health care if they switched jobs or had a pre-existing condition.
I was in Vancouver to give a speech and sign some books at a meeting of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW). I have a great fondness for the Machinists because their President when I was coming of age in the early 1980s was a fire-breathing, hell-raising trade unionist named Bill Wipinsinger, who gave some of the best speeches I have ever seen in my life, and who never backed down from challenging authority; and also because my greatest political mentor was an Iowa Machinist named Bill Fenton, who was the hardest drinker, best organizer, and most fearless political rabble-rouser I ever knew. When I was a young community organizer, I organized a union for my organization, and it was an easy pick to affiliate with the Machinists.
At the Machinists meeting, we of course spent a lot of time talking about health care and the fight for a public option, but the other big topic of the meeting was the fight for mere jobs, especially manufacturing jobs. I firmly believe that without a more aggressive focus on creating good jobs in manufacturing and infrastructure, which have a bigger multiplier effect than any other kind of jobs, that our economy will continue to sputter, and that Democratic politics will be in a world of hurt.
The big industrial unions with the most at stake in terms of the issue of manufacturing jobs - the IAMAW, UAW, Steelworkers, Teamsters - do not by themselves have the political power right now to force the Democrats to go down this path, to do more investments in creating these jobs, to stop being pansies with other countries so often on trade issues, to invest in the manufacturing sectors with the most promise. Hopefully, they can get the broader progressive movement to join in this cause. But Democrats would be very foolish not to see the economic and political wisdom of doing this ASAP.
We are seeing glimmers of this with Obama. The investments made by the stimulus bill and his first budget proposal made were decent starts, and finally standing up to the Chinese on the tire issue was very welcome. But we are going to need to see a lot more in the way of serious job initiatives if this badly wounded economy is going to start producing jobs.
The Machinists' decision to endorse Sen. Hillary Clinton -- and Gov. Mile Huckabee of Arkansas -- comes as a surprise to advisers for Sen. John Edwards, some of whom were confident as of last night that the Machinists were on the verge of endorsing them.
"We began this process with invitation to five Democratic candidates and five Republican candidates to come participate in a conversation with candidates. Some of the candidates declined," an IAMAW official said. "They were in depth conversations, held before 700 IAM leaders from around the United States. We conducted a survey of our membership. We also conducted polling of the folks at the site and so we had a pretty extensive outreach program to try to ascertain what our folks wanted to do. And Sen. Clinton received the most support."
** A labor political official not affiliated with the Machinists told me, "They want a winner! And a frontrunner with HRC's pedigree has no downside. Sure Edwards is great on labor but she looks more like a winner."
Now don't get me wrong, as Tom Buffenbarger, the President of the Machinists International, has an awesome name. But this is why labor can't get traction. It doesn't matter to their leaders that Clinton employs a union-buster as her chief strategist, they want a winner.
If you make your endorsement premised on who is most likely to win instead of your principles and/or interests, then you have no principles and/or interests except backing winning candidates. Candidates know this, which is why Hillary Clinton thinks nothing of having a union-buster as her chief strategist. And in the White House, she's going to know that she need fear nothing from the Machinists, because all they want is to be with a winner, and who's more of a winner than the President?
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