IAM files suit against NASA

Source: Workers Independent News

NASA has been hit with a lawsuit from workers represented by the International Association of Machinists. The suit claims that NASA interfered in contract negotiations with the United Space Alliance. The suit claims that NASA violated the Service Contract Act by telling United Space Alliance that it would not reimburse for increased labor costs resulting from the negotiations. The Alliance is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing and supplies launch services to NASA. According to federal labor law federal agencies are supposed to remain neutral during contract negotiations.





Read more: http://www.laborradio.org/node/6600

bless her heart, and a couple of others as well.



It bugs me to see this pic--looks like one of my dogs...

Our uni recently revised the payscales for our union classified staff upward, and several people are losing their jobs as a result. When the modified wage scales were sent to the state for some of our grant funded positions, the uni was informed that the grant amounts were fixed and that the state wouldn't adjust them to account for increased labor costs. Because the school cannot afford to pay the employees their newly increased salaries from the fixed grant budgets, those positions will have to be eliminated. Most of the people will simply be moved laterally and bump newer employees from their jobs, but a few have no equivalent positions to move into and will simply be laid off. There's a bit of irony in the fact that they're getting fired because the union got them a raise.

Several people have asked why there was no inquiry to the state about this beforehand, and we were told the same thing this article states...government agencies can't comment on these things during labor negotiations. Still, if they had, the union might have been able to negotiate differently for those positions and preserve those jobs. At this point, the new contract is set and those people will be unemployed in a few months.

I don't know the history of this particular law, but in this case it seems to have created labor issues instead of resolving them.

of the people they intend to lay off?

Most of these are grants to run statewide projects, so they will presumably be shifted to other uni's where the classified staff are on a lower wage scale (this already happens on rare occasion when grants get reduced). Because classified staff are employees of the individual uni's and not the statewide system, employees cannot transfer with them.

A couple of the affected grants will be kept around, and the duties will be shifted to current part-time employees. One that I'm particularly knowledgeable about will be given to a current 40% employee as a 60% job. This will make the part-time employee a full-time employee, but since her 40% position is at a lower classification, she will still be paid less than an employee working at 100% in the new grant specialist position. The current employee in that position was told that she could either keep her job and be reduced to 60% (24 hours a week), or take a lateral transfer and bump a less senior person from an equal position in another department. She took the transfer and pushed someone out who had been there a few years less than she. That opened the 60% position up, and the part timer jumped on it.

But, as I said, most of these will simply be transferred to other uni's with lower labor costs, and the jobs will simply vanish.

These are all good people, and none of them deserve to lose their jobs or pay. Those employees deserved those raises, but it seems to me that the problems could have been avoided if someone had just checked with the state first to find out whether there was even money to cover the raises. Nobody did...apparently for legal reasons...and these employees ended up getting raises that cost them their jobs. That's just freaking WRONG!

Their full name used (and may still be) the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. My grandfather was a 30 year member. I first registered to vote at his union hall.