Who You Didn’t See at the Farnborough Air Show
By Robert Martinez, Jr.
International President, International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers
Last week, the famed Farnborough International Airshow took flight in the UK. It’s an exhibition for the aerospace industry’s latest and greatest aircraft, and probably the most important week of the year for the sector, an essential and growing cog in the global economy.
Visitors saw the latest feats of aerospace engineering dance through the air. Corporate executives wined and dined each other in posh chalets, hoping to strike the next multi-billion dollar deal. Government officials dangled incentives — tax breaks, low-cost labor, free land — in front of any company considering moving aerospace work their way.
More than $200 billion in orders were placed at the last show in 2014, a record. The top 100 aerospace and defense companies in the world made $65 billion in profits that year.
Sounds like all is well, if you ask those at Farnborough at least.
But who is missing from the conversation? Who’s not invited while the future of an industry worth trillions of dollars is molded?
The 8.7 million working men and women who actually make the aircraft.
They weren’t there to tell you about the effects that continued outsourcing to low-wage countries like China and Mexico has on all workers. You didn’t hear about how existing trade deals — and proposed ones like the Trans-Pacific Partnership — are making it even easier to ship jobs elsewhere for, literally, pennies on the dollar. No one talked about how anti-worker politicians and their corporate allies around the world are weakening labor laws where they do exist and keeping them from being established where they don’t.
For an industry that creates so much wealth, far too little of it finds its way to the working people who make it profitable.
That’s why the union I’m proud to lead, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and other aerospace worker organizations around the world, are fighting back. Under the umbrella of the IndustriALL Global Union, which represents 50 million workers in 140 countries, we are advocating for a new model of globalization that puts people first.
One of our most powerful tools is cooperation.
We’re forging global framework agreements that set baseline standards for aerospace work, both within individual companies and up and down their supply chains. In April, trade unions representing workers at the Italian multinational Finmeccanica agreed to a set of common priorities — restructuring, training, recruitment, outsourcing and more.
We’re working together so that workers at Airbus in Alabama, Boeing in South Carolina, and other places throughout the world can enjoy the benefits of belonging to a union — a fundamental human right.
Finally, we’re making full use of global organizations, such as the International Labor Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, to hold governments and corporations accountable when they mistreat their workers.
The future of the aerospace industry depends on the hard-working men and women who work in it. We hope you paid attention to them, too, Farnborough.
Robert Martinez, Jr., a former aircraft assembler at Lockheed Martin, is the international president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the largest aerospace union in the world. The IAM represents 630,000 active and retired members in the aerospace, transportation, manufacturing, shipbuilding, woodworking and other industries. Visit goIAM.org for more.
