Sisters and Brothers, Have you heard the expression: “How do you eat an elephant? ONE BITE AT A TIME!” Well, it looks like the RTX company is attempting this tactic to destroy Local 1505. We’ve just finished processing union people who lost their jobs because RTX moved the work out of state to New Hampshire. This was supposed to be a one-off situation created by a lease agreement expiring. And, even though we knew this was a bogus excuse for the move, we had little recourse to stop it. Now, we are learning the company is moving kitting work to Manchester, NH! We have tried to convince them to find a warehouse here in Massachusetts under the jurisdiction of Local 1505. But they are obviously attempting to avoid our union workers and move more work out of state to non-union facilities. We also have issue with the company and their “Central Engineering” group. It seems they think it’s better to vend out every bit of what our facilities group does. In Marlboro there is an engineer who won’t give the work to our union facilities staff because; “if I work with the vendor I can continue to work from home and not come to the plant to meet with the union workers”. Apparently, the Central Engineering staff doesn’t want to do their jobs! With the vendors, they can just hand off the work to the vendor foreman, go home and watch the soaps! These folks could learn a thing or two from our members who get up and come to work hard every day! RTX does not understand it is mismanagement which is preventing 1505 from doing the work. Using Local 1505 labor has historically been the best way to get the job done with the lowest cost. I do not understand what value these engineers bring to the equation. Unless it is a designed plan to eradicate our union facilities’ jobs. The VP of Labor Relations, Steve Ratner, is trying to eliminate the skilled labor responsibilities using false data from what they’re calling “Job Reflective Analyses”. These reports are flawed due to the incompetence of the staff writing them. And the Marlboro Site Manager is not helping the situation. He is claiming our Union workers have too much to do. This is a complete fabrication! Our workers are not too busy to get the job done. In fact, many are searching for more work to do every day! RTX has NO MAJOR PROJECTS planned in Massachusetts for the next 2 quarters! Our people have the skills, the desire, and the time to do the work! All we are asking RTX is to let our skilled labor do their jobs without this ridiculous interference. At the rate things are digressing, we have no other recourse but to start running informational pickets to fight for our jobs at the sites where this anti-union behavior exists. We NEED membership involvement here! Please, understand we must stay together and battle for these jobs. Or else by the time the RTX company gets to YOUR job, there will be no one left to fight for YOU! We must not let RTX eat us one bite at a time. Yours in Solidarity, Michael Zagami IBEW Local 1505 Business Manager |
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Fighting For Good Jobs
