The Strike at Lockheed

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The strike at Lockheed Martin is about more than securing an affordable health care plan and ensuring new hires will also be eligible for the company pension plan many vested employees have. It is about fairness to share in the success and profits to keep up with the cost of living and to secure the reputation of the company through a work ethic of doing the job right the first time and correcting faults before it affects production progress on the assembly line.
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The various local news organizations have only reported mostly one side of the strike: Lockheeds' side. What is not reported is that the strike is also about re-hires who are more vulnerable to the draconian "offer" Lockheed negotiators want to implement. Re-hires are more than just people who worked for the company and took a leave of absence. They also include people who were laid-off. If the company's current offer for a contract is accepted, the company can decide to have another mass lay-off and, thus, nullify the pensions of those laid-off when they return, regardless of their years of service to the company. In the words of the strikers. "AIN'T NO WAY!!".
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The contract proposal would also affect a prospective applicants' decision who may decide to fore go posting a work application due to the lack of a pension and an expensive health care package. It may also affect other current new hires in deciding to seek employment elsewhere, where there is a pension and an affordable health care plan for themselves and their family. In either case, the existing 401(k) plan would be the only retirement package left to rely on.
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According to the Lockheed negotiators "best, last, and final proposal" for a new contract, the proposed health care program includes a high cost to both employees and retirees, part of which was omitted by the local news organizations. See the picture chart below.
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The In-Network cost was highly emphasized while much of the Out-Of-Network cost was hardly mentioned. The Out-Of-Network cost is staggering and unaffordable, especially for those who have no choice but to see a specialist who is not a part of the Lockheed Martin listed medical network. This would severely affect those who may have a child with a crippling disease or deformity, or cancer. If the LM Health Works program does become ratified in the new contract, the policy writers have signaled that they will drop the remaining choice in the 2015 contract, leaving only the LM Health Works plan in place.
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On the flip side of this coin, the company will also suffer an increasing turn-over rate. All organizations, regardless of what they produce, rely on a high retention rate for increased productivity and improve on existing quality in the process through instruction, hands-on training and experience. The longer an employee stays on the job, the more experience they gain to develop a more quality product and pass that knowledge on to the next new employee. In doing so, the company would save millions from design and engineering flaws as well as reduce required maintenance man-hours. Up to this point in time, the Lockheed Martin brand has always meant a product of high quality at a low cost in the product and maintenance.
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Based on the negative "opinions" posted in newspapers, there is a misguided understanding and a lot of arm chair politicians imposing their bumper sticker rhetoric about unions and union members. Such ideology can only be sourced from politicians and pundits who are bent on breaking up unions and allowing organizations to regress to a time when hourly wage employees had no rights in any way, shape, or form. If this is the case, then those "opinionated experts" should also call for the end of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and Civil Rights. Without organized unions, there would be no weekends or holidays all Americans, union or not, now observe and enjoy today.
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Who are the strikers at Lockheed? They are our fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, friends and acquaintances, armed service members on deployment and reservists on standby (officer and enlisted), church members, community leaders and volunteers, college undergraduates and graduate students, and our veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Columbia (war on drugs), Panama, Grenada, The Persian Gulf War, Kosovo, and Afghanistan and Iraq. Although each worker has a very high work ethic, the only prevalent collective concern when assembling each craft by hand is for the pilot.
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The veterans especially know what it is like to fly or ride in a vehicle or craft that is made to get them home and keep them safe during combat operations as well as repel and defeat the enemy anywhere in the world. As some people who post opinions in the paper may blurt out to the strikers, "...be thankful you have a job", they should be thankful for the freedom each working veteran have secured for them to make such comments and freedoms they enjoy that every veteran sacrificed for them.
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Lockheed Martin executives continue to assert that production has not suffered. According to inside sources who wish to remain anonymous, very few departments are struggling to stay productive. Such departments include structure, wing assembly, composites, inspection, final assembly, avionics, and software programming. What normally takes an actual certified assembler to accomplish in a regular 8 hour work day, the new "certified" supervisors, specialists, assistant managers, floor managers and interns, charged to take over assembly duties, continue to struggle assembling each aircraft and leaving more work cards incomplete and increasing quality assurance review (QAR) issues, each of which directly affects cost overruns in man-hours and materials that leads to a higher price tag for each plane produced.
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Regardless of how Lockheed executives may spin the situation and what the public may say or believe about the Lockheed Strike of 2012, the strike is about fairness in equality and compensation and to insure all current employees, new hires, re-hires, and retirees are fairly treated and not gouged or forced to accept a health care plan that may cost up to $10,000 out of pocket expense for out-of-network doctors and specialists, and to guarantee a company pension. After all, it is not like demanding for a golden parachute for failing.