Immigration no problem for aircraft mechanics!
The national security implications of outsourcing "have been largely ignored." http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18725
Fixing an aircraft is not like fixing a Chevy. Aircraft mechanics don't do their job with guesses, but instead do them with a repair manual open in front of them, mapping every step.
Manuals are written in English, the worldwide language of aviation.
News 8 has uncovered a pipeline of mechanics that are being funneled into the United States from foreign countries and may lack the necessary English skills to read and understand the manuals needed to make proper repairs.
Documents and interviews indicate one Texas repair firm, San Antonio Aerospace (SAA), now has more than 100 Mexican and Asian aircraft mechanics. SAA's sprawling repair station in San Antonio is currently running two shifts a day doing contract work for both Delta Airlines and UPS, among others.
Some SAA repairmen say the Mexican workers lack the ability to even understand the content of company meetings, much less read manuals. Nonetheless, they say, SAA sent a manager to Mexico to actively recruit repairmen.
One certified American mechanic who spoke Spanish said he acted as an informal translator to help the Mexican workers once they arrived in San Antonio.
"I would be like the Pied Piper to them," he said. "They would follow me and ask what the meeting was about, 'What did the lead mechanic say?'"
Later, after watching a group of Asians arrive at SAA, he said he realized the folly in helping the new hires with language problems after overhearing a conversation between two of his managers.
"All these American contractors that think we can't live without them," he said one of the managers said to the other. "We will just get rid of them."
Ultimately, he and many other American mechanics at SAA were laid off while the foreign workers remained.
SAA president Moh Loong Loh said in a written statement that his company is "an equal opportunity employer, and our hiring policy is in strict compliance with local, state and federal regulations."
Other questions regarding SAA's recruiting practices include the number of foreign mechanics employed and potential safety issues that went unanswered.
San Antonio Aerospace is owned by ST Aerospace, headquartered in Singapore. It is one of the largest aircraft repair companies in the world.
Delta Airlines sends Boeing 757 passenger aircrafts to SAA for repair. Delta says the company has inspectors on the premises in San Antonio who "are responsible for ensuring that all manufacturer, federal aviation and Delta requirements are met on every Delta aircraft."
"Delta does not compromise on the quality or safety of work performed on its aircraft," the company said.
UPS sends wide-bodied Airbus and McDonnell Douglas cargo planes to SAA for extensive repairs. UPS said in a written statement that the company has 13 full time staff people on the premises at San Antonio Aerospace.
"We do not know if every mechanic speaks English," a UPS spokeswoman said. "Once a mechanic makes the repair(s), the repairs go to a quality control inspector who has to verify the work is done correctly. After this step, one of our UPS team will also review the work."
Immigration documents list at least some of the Mexican mechanics as "scientific technicians."
"Frankly, this document scares me because it doesn't state these people are trained, and actually uses a term calling them 'scientific technicians," said John Goglia, a certified mechanic and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board. " That's not an aviation term."
Goglia said he is especially concerned if the mechanics lack solid English skills.
"When you bring in a person who can't read the manual you raise the risk," Gogila said. "When you bring in a person who doesn't understand the verbal instructions from a co-worker to his supervisor you raise the risk. It doesn't take a lot of tic marks in raising the risk before we have ourselves a serious problem."
Documents indicate the men are paid by a company called Aircraft Workers Worldwide, with an office in Daphne, Alabama. AWW CEO Daniel Hardin declined to be interviewed. When News 8 came to his small office in an industrial park, an AWW employee told the reporter to leave.
In a federal immigration application, AWW applied for a TN Visa under the Free Trade agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. AWW says it has a gross annual income of $9 million. AWW says it intends to pay the workers a $1,000 weekly salary for about 40 to 50 hours. AWW, in the application, also claims to have "a site" or office on SAA property.
American mechanics from Mobile Aerospace, a sister company of SAA, in Mobile, Alabama near Daphne, said other mechanics were brought in from overseas to work there. The Mobile division responded to News 8's questions the same way as SAA, calling the company "an equal opportunity employer."
Current and former workers say some of the foreign workers may have left SAA for jobs elsewhere, including Florida.
Goglia said the issue should be reviewed by the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates such repairs.
"The FAA is the entity that is supposed to safeguard the public's interest in safe transportation," Goglia said. "And, where are they?"
The FAA, in a comment about a previous News 8 story, said it is not necessary for an aircraft mechanic to speak perfect English. (How does the FAA define the term "perfect"?-pandora)
http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/64587112.html
Northwest (now Delta) Airlines prepares union-busting assault against mechanics. AFL-CIO plans to scab on strike/lockout.
Management at Northwest Airlines is organizing a massive strikebreaking operation against its 4,400 mechanics and cleaners, members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA). The airline is seeking to provoke a strike on August 20, when a 30-day cooling-off period expires, by demanding sweeping concessions totaling $176 million a year. These include a huge wage cut and the elimination of 50 percent of the mechanics’ jobs. Should the union decide not to strike, Northwest is poised to declare a lockout.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/nwa-a16.shtml
Northwest (now Delta) Airlines Surrenders FAA Part 145 Repair Station Certificate to Avoid Revocation.
Northwest Airlines (now Delta) recently surrendered its Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) Part 145 repair station certificate in order to avoid having it revoked by the FAA, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) reported.
"Northwest Airlines fell far behind in maintaining the staffing and training requirements needed to keep its FAA Part 145 repair station certificate and decided to drop it voluntarily at the end of January," said AMFA National Safety and Standards Director John Glynn. "They were under serious scrutiny, and in effect they quit before they were fired. To my knowledge, Northwest is the only major airline that is operating without this very important Part 145 certificate."
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060209005851&newsLang=en
A Greater Threat Than Terrorism ?
Only a small handful of people have looked objectively at the issue. These few and the large number of Americans whose careers have been destroyed by outsourcing have a different view of outsourcing's impact. But so far there has been no debate, just a shouting down of skeptics as "protectionists."
Now comes an important new book, Outsourcing America, published by the American Management Association. The authors, two brothers, Ron and Anil Hira, are experts on the subject. One is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the other is professor at Simon Fraser University.
The authors note that despite the enormity of the stakes for all Americans, a state of denial exists among policymakers and outsourcing's corporate champions about the adverse effects on the US. The Hira brothers succeed in their task of interjecting harsh reality where delusion has ruled.
In what might be an underestimate, a University of California study concludes that 14 million white-collar jobs are vulnerable to being outsourced offshore. These are not only call-center operators, customer service and back-office jobs, but also information technology, accounting, architecture, advanced engineering design, news reporting, stock analysis, and medical and legal services. The authors note that these are the jobs of the American Dream, the jobs of upward mobility that generate the bulk of the tax revenues that fund our education, health, infrastructure, and social security systems.
The loss of these jobs "is fool's gold for companies." Corporate America's short-term mentality, stemming from bonuses tied to quarterly results, is causing US companies to lose not only their best employees-their human capital-but also the consumers who buy their products. Employees displaced by foreigners and left unemployed or in lower paid work have a reduced presence in the consumer market. They provide fewer retirement savings for new investment.
Nothink economists assume that new, better jobs are on the way for displaced Americans, but no economists can identify these jobs. The authors point out that "the track record for the re-employment of displaced US workers is abysmal: "The Department of Labor reports that more than one in three workers who are displaced remains unemployed, and many of those who are lucky enough to find jobs take major pay cuts. Many former manufacturing workers who were displaced a decade ago because of manufacturing that went offshore took training courses and found jobs in the information technology sector. They are now facing the unenviable situation of having their second career disappear overseas."
American economists are so inattentive to outsourcing's perils that they fail to realize that the same incentive that leads to the outsourcing of one tradable good or service holds for all tradable goods and services. In the 21st century the US economy has only been able to create jobs in nontradable domestic services-the hallmark of a third world labor force.
Prior to the advent of offshore outsourcing, US employees were shielded against low wage foreign labor. Americans worked with more capital and better technology, and their higher productivity protected their higher wages.
Outsourcing forces Americans to "compete head-to-head with foreign workers" by "undermining US workers' primary competitive advantage over foreign workers: their physical presence in the US" and "by providing those overseas workers with the same technologies."
The result is a lose-lose situation for American employees, American businesses, and the American government. Outsourcing has brought about record unemployment in engineering fields and a major drop in university enrollments in technical and scientific disciplines. Even many of the remaining jobs are being filled by lower paid foreigners brought in on H-1b and L-1 visas. American employees are discharged after being forced to train their foreign replacements.
US corporations justify their offshore operations as essential to gain a foothold in emerging Asian markets. The Hira brothers believe this is self-delusion. "There is no evidence that they will be able to outcompete local Chinese and Indian companies, who are very rapidly assimilating the technology and know-how from the local US plants. In fact, studies show that Indian IT companies have been consistently outcompeting their US counterparts, even in US markets. Thus, it is time for CEOs to start thinking about whether they are fine with their own jobs being outsourced as well."
The authors note that the national security implications of outsourcing "have been largely ignored."
Outsourcing is rapidly eroding America's superpower status. Beginning in 2002 the US began running trade deficits in advanced technology products with Asia, Mexico and Ireland. As these countries are not leaders in advanced technology, the deficits obviously stem from US offshore manufacturing. In effect, the US is giving away its technology, which is rapidly being captured, while US firms reduce themselves to a brand name with a sales force.
In an appendix, the authors provide a devastating expose of the three "studies" that have been used to silence doubts about offshore outsourcing-the Global Insight study (March 2004) for the Information Technology Association of America, the Catherine Mann study (December 2003) for the Institute for International Economics, and the McKinsey Global Institute study (August 2003).
The ITAA is a lobbying group for outsourcing. The ITAA spun the results of the study by releasing only the executive summary to reporters who agreed not to seek outside opinion prior to writing their stories.
Mann's study is "an unreasonably optimistic forecast based on faulty logic and a poor understanding of technology and strategy."
The McKinsey report "should be viewed as a self-interested lobbying document that presents an unrealistically optimistic estimate of the impact of offshore outsourcing and an undeveloped and politically unviable solution to the problems they identify."
Outsourcing America is a powerful work. Only fools will continue clinging to the premise that outsourcing is good for America.
Aerotoxic Association: http://www.aerotoxic.org/index.php
The association is run by a group of aircrew whose careers have ended prematurely due to Aerotoxic Syndrome, and we now want to help similarly affected aircrew and passengers.
CNN's Allan Chernoff reports on how eight people were sickened due to an oil leak on a US Airways jet engine. A similar incident also occurred several times on a Northwest (now Delta) Airlines aircraft.
I traveled a lot by air when I lived overseas - one time the pilot let us listen in on his channel - when we were passing Taiwan on the way to Tokyo, I heard the Taipei control tower and could not understand a damn thing they were saying, and they're supposed to speak and understand English. The captain had to ask them to repeat themselves several times.
I knew an ex Quantas stewardess - she flew a lot in the Pacific rim area - she said one time they were approaching Tokyo, and the captain muttered "I can never understand a bloody thing these Japs are saying." Just consider the implications of that.