IAA members voted for 5-year contract from HB

Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers on Saturday voted to accept a five-year contract offer from Hawker Beechcraft Corp. The voting members approved the deal by 69 percent.

“Our membership has ratified the contract today, and we’re proud to have a contract,” said Rita Rogers, assistant directing business representative for Machinists District 70 and lead negotiator for the talks with Hawker. The union did not provide breakdown of how many members voted on Saturday.

The Machinists, and the roughly 2,600 Hawker workers the union represents, now have a contract that protects their pension plan and provides 1-percent annual wage increases after the first two years. It also includes a performance-based pay scale that could provide further wage increases and offers more training opportunities to the workers.

The contract also will double the employees’ share of health care costs by the fourth year. Hawker CEO Bill Boisture said in a statement that securing the company’s work force was a “significant” step for both sides moving forward.

“The new contract encourages open communication, mutual respect and trust, while continuing to leverage the tremendous progress we have made,” Boisture said. “This includes offering the best training opportunities to our employees through our recent agreement with the State of Kansas. This is significant for our company and provides us with the opportunity to grow efficiently in the future and keep high-quality jobs in Wichita.”

The Machinists rejected a contract offer from Hawker this past October, which was put on the table nearly a year before the current contract expired.

During those talks, offers from other states to move the company came to light. Eventually, the state of Kansas stepped in and put together an incentive package to keep the company in Wichita, a deal that originally was deemed dependent on an agreement between Hawker and the union.

The company got the state incentives anyway, and new talks with the union were put off until last month. Rogers said she felt the biggest difference in the new contract was the improvements the union had made regarding job security.

But with 31 percent of the members on Saturday still rejecting the offer, Rogers said it was clear that more work would have to be done regarding that issue.

“I think the biggest issue always has been job security,” she said. “Everyone knows that without jobs, nothing else matters. We tightened some language where there is (now more) security. We haven’t stopped all the outsourcing, but we feel we have control of some.”

She said job security is an issue that both the union and the company will have to continue to work on. “We hope together we can have a partnership here that will keep jobs in Wichita, Kansas,” Rogers said.

Saturday’s vote included a strike clause. But because the contract was accepted, those votes were not tallied.