Cessna Next On Union's Game Plan

A three-week strike at Bombardier Aerospace's Wichita, KS production plant has ended... with union workers at the Learjet plant voting to accept a new contract. That vote was 56 percent in favor, with 44 percent... and brings an end to several weeks of contentious talk from both sides.

Wichita's KWCH-12 reports the company and union -- which represents approximately 1,100 machinists at the Learjet plant -- resumed negotiations last Thursday after a federal mediator was called in.

The company made its latest offer Friday. It includes a lump-sum bonus of $1,500, plus general wage increases of four percent in the first year of the contract and three-and-a-half percent in second and third years.

In the end, the union decided that's not a bad deal... especially as Bombardier announced earlier this week it will lay off over 1,300 people from the Montreal plant that builds the CRJ700 and CRJ900, and a regional jet parts facility in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Those layoffs are due to sluggish sales of the supersized regional aircraft.

Now that workers are back on the job at Bombardier, though, machinists union officials say they'll next turn their attention down the road at Cessna, where the next round of contract talks are set to begin.

Both sides have some time to negotiate, as the current machinists contract doesn't expire until September 2007.

The Wichita Eagle reports the union says its first step will be to form committees... and survey workers at the Cessna plant, to gather information on any possible grievances.

When workers accepted their current deal back in 2004, they agreed to a set of terms quite similar to those just approved by their LearJet counterparts -- a $2,500 signing bonus... and staggered wage increases of four percent and three percent over three years.

FMI: www.goiam.org, www.bombardier.com, www.cessna.com