Planned Layoffs at McDonnell Leave Toolmakers Upset

Toolmakers on the McDonnell Douglas C-17 cargo jet program are in an uproar over an apparent company plan to lay off some American employees but retain British employees who were brought in on visas under the claim that the company could not find any Americans to do the work.

The controversy comes just as McDonnell Douglas and other aerospace firms are starting massive layoffs in response to defense budget cuts and to improve their financial performance. McDonnell said Thursday that it would lay off 3,000 white-collar workers at its Douglas Aircraft plant in Long Beach, an action unrelated to the toolmakers.

With work dwindling everywhere in the industry, the American toolmakers say they will be hard-pressed to find new employment, and they are outraged that a defense firm would retain foreign workers in such a downturn. The dispute points up the rising level of tension among workers amid the approaching defense cutbacks.

At issue are so-called contract toolmakers or job shoppers, who work under contract at McDonnell Douglas through an outside placement firm. Douglas employs about 160 contract workers on the Air Force C-17 cargo jet program. In addition, Douglas has 70 British toolmakers who are regular company employees and about 120 other toolmakers who are employees but not British.

An internal memorandum, obtained by The Times on Friday, indicates that company officials were weighing the consequences of laying off the contractors as early as last January. The memo said management would have to take into consideration the “political objections by some contractors if we retain too many UKs (British toolmakers) and terminate American citizens.”

The memo indicated that various management departments within Douglas were seeking “an agreement on how many (British) we want to keep as opposed to how many American contractors we want to keep.” The concern was that “UKs cost less than contractors.”

In any event, the memo said, “We must reduce head count ASAP (as soon as possible).” It also indicated that C-17 executives had ordered a 15% cut in overtime pay. Last year, some toolmakers were working as many as 70 to 80 hours per week.

A Douglas spokesman said Friday: “No layoff notices have been issued at this time. The only contractors who have been laid off until this time were let go because they were marginal or for not following company rules.”

The spokesman said the British workers are “regular employees and union members” and added, “Our agreement with the union requires that we let a contract person go before a union worker.”

But union officials said their position is to support the contract toolmakers, not the British.

“The British must go because they are imported workers, and American workers have the first right to those jobs,” said Douglas Griffith, president of United Auto Workers Local 148, which represents Douglas toolmakers. “It is my understanding that there has been two or three court decisions that imported workers cannot be in place while a company displaces American workers.”

Griffith emphasized that he had no information that the company was actually planning to lay off any workers, since Douglas still has many tools to make for its C-17 and MD-11 aircraft programs.

Griffith said Douglas paid $400,000 to a San Francisco law firm earlier this year to help resolve a problem when the State Department declined to extend the British workers’ visas. Griffith said the union helped get the visas extended because it was convinced that Douglas was having a hard time finding American workers.

“There is no objection from us in terms of needing those people when we had evidence that the company made a countrywide search,” he added.

But a Douglas supervisor who has been concerned about the use of British workers said there are adequate numbers of American toolmakers, but they have not been hired by Douglas. The American contract workers are worried.

“We are all just waiting for the ax to fall,” said Joseph Murray, a 15-year aircraft industry veteran at Douglas. “I haven’t been formally notified, but the handwriting is on the wall.”