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June 16, 2009

Despite June heat, strike progress ice cold

By Jeff Mullin, Senior Writer

The June weather may have heated up, but progress on settling the nine-day strike by union civilian employees at Vance Air Force Base remains ice cold.

Jerry McCune, president and directing business representative of International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District Lodge 171, and Gary Richardson, program manager at Vance for CSC Applied Technologies LLC, each reported having no contact with the other Tuesday.

“The strike continues,” McCune said. “The pickets are at 99 percent of the work force. We are in it for the long haul. We would rather get a fair contract, but at this point they (CSC) don’t want to do that. We will maintain the strike line.”

At 12:01 a.m. June 8, nearly 800 union employees of CSC Applied Technologies LLC and subcontractors DenMar Services, M1 Support Services and PRI/DJI, began walking the picket line near the west gate at Vance.

The prior three-year agreement between the union and the contractors expired at midnight June 7. Union members voted by a 94 percent margin June 5 to reject the company’s “last, best and final” contract offer, then voted by a 96 percent margin to strike.

The two sides have not met face-to-face since Friday when Richardson and McCune sat down with IAMAW aerospace coordinator Ray Moffatt and CSC attorney Peter Van Dyke.

“These off the record discussions were not successful,” said McCune.

Richardson repeatedly has said the company will continue the terms of the just-expired collective bargaining agreement until Oct. 1 if union workers will agree to go back to work and union officials agree to go back to the bargaining table.

“Let’s get the people back to work, let’s go back to the table and negotiate what issues are open,” Richardson said. “And we get the people back to work with an extension to the current CBA. They don’t lose a nickel, the rates are there, the benefits are there.”

“We are willing to sit down anytime, anyplace, without conditions to go back to discuss our issues,” said Van Dyke, a veteran labor attorney. “We would like to have our work force back working.”

The strike has halted flying at Vance and prompted the Air Force on Monday to move 27 students and instructor pilots to two bases in Texas, Randolph AFB in San Antonio and Laughlin AFB in Del Rio. These classes were chosen because they are close to completing their instruction.

Two Introduction to Fighter Fundamen-tals classes were sent to Randolph. IFF is advance training for students who already have graduated from undergraduate pilot training and who have been assigned to fly fighters or bombers.

One Joint Specialized Undergraduate Pilot Training class, number 09-11, has been sent to Laughlin. Friday night the students of 09-11 will have their assignment night at Laughlin. That’s the night they find out what aircraft they will fly after they graduate. They will return to Vance for their graduation ceremony July 2.

The movement of part of Vance’s flying training mission to another base is believed to be unprecedented in the base’s 68-year history. Vance has lost an estimated 1,250 training flights as a result of the current work stoppage, the first in the base’s history since 1965, when 58 firefighters struck for 97 days, a walkout that did not affect Vance’s flying training mission.

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