OXNARD : Aerospace Workers OK Pay Hike Delay

Union employees at Abex Aerospace in Oxnard have agreed to postpone scheduled pay increases and give management greater flexibility to shuffle employees in an effort to prevent the closure of its Oxnard plant, one of the city’s largest employers.

Members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union Local 1-895 approved the 18-month contract extension on Wednesday by a nearly 3-to-1 margin, said Raul Ramirez, the union’s local leader.

The contract was initially set to expire in September, 1993.

Both union and management representatives said Thursday that the agreement, approved well in advance of the contract’s expiration, improves the chance that the aerospace manufacturer will be able to keep open its Oxnard plant.

“We’re very encouraged,” said Randall Holliday, counsel for Abex Division, who called the new pact “a very positive development.”

Managers at the New Hampshire headquarters of Pneumo Abex Corp., the parent company of Abex Aerospace, will announce a restructuring of the nationwide firm within a month, Holliday said. The Oxnard facility is one of three major aerospace plants run by Abex, he said. The other two are in Michigan and Ohio.

News of the pending shake-up was a “prime factor” in the union’s willingness to renegotiate its contract, which covers 400 of the facility’s 500 employees, Ramirez said.

“We renegotiated not just to keep the plant open, but to prevent layoffs that may have been around the corner,” he said.

Ramirez said the union was sensitive to the economic plight faced by Abex, which manufactures hydraulic and mechanical flight controls for military and civilian aircraft.

“The company has $1.2 billion worth of manufacturing capability, but only has $650 million worth of work,” Ramirez said in explaining the difficulty caused by a downturn in the military and civilian aerospace industries.

Key elements of the revised contract call for deferring a 3% pay raise scheduled for September. Instead of getting a 3% increase in September, union employees will wait a year before receiving a 1% pay hike, and then receive two more 1% raises in subsequent years.

The union also agreed to give management more flexibility in assigning employees outside their customary work classifications. “That allows us to be more efficient in utilizing our work force,” Holliday said. Under terms of the revised contract, it will be easier for the company to retrain a drill operator to run a lathe, he said.