Teamsters President Concerned With Foreign Shops
Will outsourcing be the final answer for Delta Air Lines after
an anticipated merger with Northwest Airlines Corp? Not so much,
says Delta, which stresses it plans to keep most major service work
in-house for 2008.
Bringing the issue to the table on Monday was Teamsters
President James Hoffa, who fears a Delta/NWA merger might launch an
increase in the amount of aircraft maintenance work being performed
overseas.
"Northwest does an extensive amount of outsourcing overseas,"
Hoffa told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The potential of more
jobs being sent to Asia "is a key concern that should be addressed"
by a regulatory review in a merger situation, as well as the levels
of safety standards, he added.
Atlanta-based Delta admonishes such
concerns of maintenance work scheduled to be performed overseas,
because they currently profit from taking on maintenance work for
other carriers. "Delta senior leadership has made very clear its
commitment to growing its in-house maintenance business by focusing
on high-skill, high-value maintenance work," said Delta spokeswoman
Chris Kelly. "Last year, Delta TechOps brought in more than $377
million in revenue, and 2008 is looking to be even better."
The Teamsters say they're concerned with safety and regulatory
issues with outsourcing. The union does not represent workers at
either Northwest or Delta, but notes several major US airlines
spend two-thirds of the dollars on contract repairs at foreign
shops, including facilities in Mexico, China, the Philippines, and
El Salvador.
According to an MIT analysis of Transportation Department data,
Delta spent $467 million on outsourced work in 2006, while
Northwest spent $647 million -- both rising from $271 and $261
respectively, in 2004. Hoffa -- and several others -- say this
poses a threat to traveler safety, because hiring standards in
other countries do not include the same standards of background or
substance testing.
"Aircraft mechanics should all be held to a single standard
whether they repair airplanes in Beijing or San Francisco," Hoffa
said. "Unfortunately, the Federal Aviation Administration doesn't
have the staff or funding" to regulate overseas work to US
standards.
The FAA noted via spokeswoman Alison Duquette "the amount of
work outsourced definitely has been increasing," adding statistics
to back up that assertion aren't available.
"The standards for domestic and foreign repair stations are the
same," Duquette said. "The FAA has not seen a problem with
outsourced maintenance."
Paul Bradley, a United Airlines mechanic at Dulles
International, begs to differ. He says maintenance work performed
on United jets in Beijing has been substandard, to say the
least.
"Once the planes come back [from Beijing], we spend two or three
weeks trying to fix the things they screwed up overseas," said
Bradley, who has urged United's mechanics to switch their
representation from the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association,
to the Teamsters.
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