Texas Workers Vote to Strike Lockheed Plant

The union representing about 4,000 workers at Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Texas plant that makes the F-16 and other military planes voted overwhelmingly Sunday to go on strike today.

Negotiators for both sides met late Saturday but failed to agree on a new three-year contract.

Lockheed made a new offer, sweetening its wage and pension proposals slightly. But union officials said the offer was not sufficient to recommend ratification.

The strike vote, 2,380 for and 432 opposed, came after workers rejected the company’s offer by a similar margin. A simple majority of workers was needed to reject the contract offer, with a two-thirds vote required to call a strike.

The expiring three-year contract was reached after the Machinists walked off the job for 18 days in April 2000.

Lockheed is the nation’s largest defense contractor; its Fort Worth facility employs about 15,000 workers.

“We are disappointed that the union did not accept our contract proposal,” Lockheed Martin spokesman Joe Stout said.

The union’s production workers build the F-16 and the midsection of the F/A-22, and will begin building the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter later this year.

The union’s most recent proposal sought raises of 8% the first year and 6% the next two years, a $1,500 bonus and pension payments of $70 a month per year of service.

Pat Lane, president of Machinists Local 776, said that proposal is still below what Lockheed agreed to last year in contracts for workers at its plants in Marietta, Ga., Palmdale and Sunnyvale, Calif.