Convair to Replace Striking Machinists : Company Starts Interviews Today for 3,000 Permanent New Workers
Officials of General Dynamics’ Convair Division said Monday that, starting today, the company will begin hiring replacements for 4,000 striking machinists.
“We will start interviewing (today) in order to bring qualified people aboard by next Monday,” company spokesman Jack Isabel said.
Advertisements seeking to recruit 3,000 new workers will appear in newspapers and radio stations beginning today, he said.
“We’re running full-page ads tomorrow in all the local newspapers,” Isabel said Monday. “I don’t know if we will continue such advertising for the rest of the week, but I think the ones tomorrow will be getting full attention.”
Permanent Replacements
One of the ads, which appears in The Times, states: “Applicants are advised that these positions are affected by a labor dispute at the facility. If you hire on, however, your job will still be yours once the strike is over.”
The hiring effort is an attempt to completely replace the striking workers, Isabel said.
“We have made our last and best offer. That’s final. We’re up and running. There is no intention of slowing our operations. There has been no date scheduled for further talks,” he said.
Tom Roberts, chief negotiator for the union--International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Lodge 1125--was skeptical about the company’s new hiring plan.
Clearances Needed
“There’s just not that (much) skilled help around in San Diego,” he said. Additionally, he said, machinists at Convair work on several defense projects, including the Tomahawk cruise missile and Atlas rocket, that require new employees to have government clearances. The time necessary to obtain such clearances will disrupt the company’s hiring program, he said.
“I’ve been told that’s going to take another six months,” Roberts said. “I just don’t think they can fill all the slots, maybe some of them, but not all of them.
“I’ve told my workers to file for unemployment and told them to expect the strike to last at least four to six
weeks.”
Machinists last struck the Convair Division three years ago, in a walkout that lasted two weeks.
Pickets were orderly Monday at the company’s Kearny Mesa, Pacific Highway, Lindbergh Field and Sycamore Canyon facilities, Isabel said.
The union went on strike Sunday after its members rejected the company’s proposed contract, which the union said contained inadequate wage increases and additions to the pension plan.
The company offered lump-sum pay increases totaling $4,800 over three years. The company also offered pension benefits of $23 per month per year of service.
But union representatives objected that the lump-sum proposals were being offered without a general wage increase. They also argued that the pension offer did not meet the $24 sum negotiated at competitor Rohr Industries or the $26 at Lockheed.
The Convair Division employs 8,800 workers, about 3,300 of them machinists. The approximately 700 other striking machinists are scattered between the company’s space systems and data processing divisions. Aside from military work, the machinists are employed on commercial projects such as the DC-10 fuselage, subcontracted from McDonnell-Douglas.
The entire General Dynamics operation in San Diego employs 16,500.
