GrowJobsCT

2,000 to 3,000 Connecticut jobs depend on the continuation of the F-22 fighter aircraft program.

So it’s a serious situation when the US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, recommends the end of the program after four more planes.  At Pratt & Whitney and their suppliers, if Gates’ recommendation were implemented, F-22 related layoffs could begin this year.

It’s no wonder that elected officials, aerospace manufacturers and other Connecticut firms, and the Machinists Union, have joined the fight to keep the program alive — at least until the next generation of war plane, the F-35, is ready for production in 2014.

Senator Chris Dodd and Representative John Larson extolled the technological virtues of the F-22 at a press conference hosted by the Machinists Union on April 9, 2009.  As a weapon, it is superior to anything else in the skies.  There are few countries on earth that could afford to even contemplate constructing an aircraft with matching capabilities.  According to Gates, that means we have enough.

What’s most striking about this debate about whether to continue the program is what’s missing.  In particular, those who want to end the program, and effectively eliminate the work being done by an estimated 75,000 to 90,000 people across this country, have no suggestions about what else these workers might make.

Obama proposed, and the Congress authorized, literally billions of dollars in spending for highways, bridges and other infrastructure repair and upgrading.  That will create jobs.  Undoubtedly, some displaced manufacturing workers, after a period of joblessness and the economic chaos that accompanies it, will find a way to shift to construction work.  That’s good.  But most displaced — or better described — discarded F-22 manufacturing workers will sink down through the economic ranks until they arrive at a low skill, low wage service job.

At Pratt & Whitney, layoffs by seniority can still mean people with 30+ years losing their jobs, since there has been little hiring and lots of layoffs over the years.  Those workers will end up in their mid-50’s looking for work, and if lucky enough to find it, beginning at the bottom of the ladder in a new place after decades of service to both Pratt and the US government, that asked for and received a lot from the workers.

What’s missing from the debate and discussion about the military budget, the F-22, the stimulus package and the future direction of our economy is any mention of a national industrial policy.  In effect, our current industrial policy — and the one in place since WWII — is to fund military production.  Millions of US workers depend on the production of weapons for continued employment.  When such programs are threatened, proponents may invoke national security, but are just as likely to focus on the need to keep jobs.  That should not be the only choice.

If the government does not want more F-22’s, they should be working with the affected manufacturers on making other products needed by the country.  The government should commit to pay for the retooling, retraining and product development costs, just as if they were ordering missles or mid-air refueling tankers.

Europe has done this for years, over the objections of the United States.  Airbus, as a prime example, could not have become the giant they are in aerospace manufacturing, without subsidies from several governments.  But as a result of that support, they employ thousands of workers — and have become the chief rival of Boeing for the title of top airframe manufacturer.  With the exception of the A400 military transport, Airbus has achieved its current status producing civilian aircraft — with support that US companies would only receive for military or space projects.

The current focus by the Obama administration on renewable energy as a future engine for the US economy makes sense.  Decreased dependence on foreign oil diminishes a huge source of internatonal conflict — making defense requirements potentially less onerous.  But US manufacturing, and manufacturing workers, should not become casualties of the peace.

Energy and transportation are two critical areas where public policy plays a key role.  US defense contractors should be pressed into service on developing and producing products to address these crucial needs.   Keeping our skill base intact should be considered a national priority.  Keeping people on the job, applying those skills to new and necessary products, should be a major component of our economic recovery effort.

We should continue the F-22 program.  But in the long run, we will need a national industrial policy that includes government investment in non-defense production.  Our future as a nation depends on it.

For reasons that were entirely political, President Bush awarded the contract for the Presidential helicopter, the VH-71 designated Marine One when it flies the President, to a consortium that included British and Italian manufacturers.  Even at the time, it was considered a more than generous gift to Tony Blair for his staunch support of Bush’s foray into Iraq.  It may have been called the Coalition of the Willing, but it still helps muster the will to have a $6 billion contract arrive on your shore as a result.

Many of us were appalled, especially since the British/Italian consortium had never actually built a helicopter, and Marine One has been proudly built by the workers of Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, CT since the start of the program under Eisenhower.  

As it turns out, those of us with doubts were right.  The Marine One contract is now years behind schedule, with a projected price tag that’s gone from $6 billion to $11 billion.  In fact, it’s so far over budget, the law requires a review of the contract.  

Good.  Let’s use the occasion to add a little more stimulus to the US economy, while putting the aircraft back in the skilled hands of people who make them already and can get going on this project right away.

Bring Marine One back to Stratford, CT.  The rationale for a quid pro quo with the Europeans was a cynical exercise to begin with.  Having the US government trade Connecticut jobs for support of an unpopular military adventure made us all feel like “pawns in their game.”  President Obama intends to withdraw from Iraq.  Let’s repair some collateral damage at the same time.  Marine One — build it here.

He’s making a list and checking it twice, and every state in the nation is elbowing their way to get as much as possible on it.  It’s Obama’s List, and it’s created an Oklahoma landrush among those involved in energy and infrastructure projects.  Hopefully, Connecticut will fight through the pack and get its fair share.

As soon as the election concluded on November 8, word went out that President-elect Obama wanted to pass a huge economic stimulus package as soon as he was sworn in.  States were told to compose a list of “shovel-ready” projects that could be ready to go within 180 days of being approved.  The new President wants dramatic action to immediately address faltering employment, put money directly into the economy and attack long-neglected infrastructure erosion and our dependency on foreign oil.

Connecticut has been trying its best to do something its just not used to — hurry up.  Everything about our evaluation and approval process, our permitting procedures and funding mechanisms generally move at one speed — S-L-O-W.  We’re not used to executing a “hurry-up offense” or a two-minute drill, but if ever the game was on the line, this is it.

The Governor, every Congressional office and both chambers of the legislature have been getting lists of proposals, both for infrastructure improvement and renewable energy projects, from every state agency, wounded municipality, “green” entrepeneur and interested advocate for the past month.  Somewhere in the inner sanctum of the Rell administration, that information is now being sorted, sifted, evaluated prioritized and packaged, hopefully by someone brilliant, tireless and fully aware of the stakes.

Rarely do states compete quite so head-to-head, and this feels like the swimsuit competition, which is no longer our best event.  The other day, in response to a question on another topic, Governor Rell said, “We’re smart people here in Connecticut.  We get it.”  It’s nice to think so.  Literally hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs for the state ride on getting this right.

So much hangs in the balance, and depends so acutely on a small group of experts and leaders to deliver.  All we can do at this moment is wish them well.  It’s not necessary to remind them, and so we will not, that there will be hell to pay if they mess this up.  Hey, they’re smart people.  They get it.

US auto makers are in deep financial trouble.  It’s no surprise that an industry that relies on confident consumers and an array of financing options would feel the effects of a near-collapse of credit, and looming predictions about hard times ahead.

These companies are certainly as important as many of the financial sector businesses now on taxpayer-funded life support.  Between them, GM, Chrysler and Ford employ 240,000 workers directly.  Up to 5 million US workers, employed everywhere from parts suppliers to auto dealships, depend on the US auto industry for their livelihoods.

The automakers are now asking for a bailout.  There’s a sharp debate brewing in Washington, on Wall St. and down at the local diner where you find the folks who eventually will pay for all this, about whether to assist with government funds.

Whether these enterprises are saved through private means or the public coffers, they are in need of a drastic overhaul.  For years, we have happily motored along in monstrosities — vehicles that use too much fuel, create too much pollution and are loaded with toxins.  US cars are too big, too dirty and too inefficient for our own good, or for global sales.

Earlier this year, I visited the Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan.  They touted a grass-covered roof, skylights to save electricty, rain basins and other ecologically-friendly measures, all in service to a factory producing trucks that get 12 - 14 miles to the gallon.  I asked then if the facility could be retooled for smaller vehicles.  The Ford Escape, an SUV, is the smallest car that can be made there.

The workers in that plant earn their money.  The tasks they perform are complicated, repetitious and exacting.  But by virtue of the high profit margin associated with trucks and SUV’s in general, the Dearborn Ford workers are wedded to a product whose time has passed.

It cannot be expected that the automakers will, on their own, raise emission and mileage standards, or shift to alternative sources of energy.  They have had a long, successful history of bending the market to their products through skillful and non-stop advertising.  Now, for a variety of reasons, we are at the end of that ride too.

Regardless of what Congress does in the form of a bailout, there should be an insistence on steering vehicles into the 21st century.  That means less harmful exhaust, much greater fuel efficiency, and alternative energy sources.  It also means “greening” the vehicles so that more of the product can be recycled at the end of its use.

Especially if we’re all chipping in, we ought to have a say on where we’re going.  And we can’t get to the future if the automakers remain stuck in reverse.

Barack Obama won chiefly due to people’s deep anxiety about the US economy.  The financial crisis crystalized what many people have felt for years — that despite the accumulation of great wealth for some in recent times, the US economy seems riddled with spring-loaded traps and hidden sinkholes.  One day you have a job, or your business is running great; the next day you’re out, done, finished, and nothing or nobody can undo the damage.

Whether you 55 and hoping to make it to retirement, or 25 and looking for a sustainable career path to raise a family and enjoy a decent life, the mercurial and often cruel quality of worklife in the USA is stressful, and unduly so.  In a market economy, no one can predict the sustainability of any particular venture.  But for awhile now, the game board has been profoundly off-kilter, leaving all of us worried on a daily basis about what tomorrow might bring.  When the best efforts of an employee, or an enterprise, can be discarded without warning or regret at a moment’s notice, for the sake of a few more pennies on mountainous money piles, nobody can or will feel safe.

So Obama’s campaign promise to reward businesses that create jobs here in the US, and at a minimum, eliminate incentives for those who export US jobs, is a commitment that must be kept.  Companies have no choice but to use every competitive tool at their disposal — if they do not, their rival certainly will.  That means the rules of the road must reflect our values and our collective self-interest, and provide the appropriate restraints business cannot self-impose.  If we want to grow the US economy, it’s past time to stop encouraging outsourcing and offshoring, and high time we invested in employment here.

Obama has also rightly identified renewable, alternative energy production as a major source of new US jobs.  George Soros, international financier, recently told Bill Moyers that the past engine of global economic growth — the US consumer — is incapable of continuing to fill that role.  Soros went on to say that “green energy” is ready to take over the role as the prime engine of the global economy.  That sounds right.

In Obama’s election night speech in Chicago, he summed up the extreme challenges we face at this moment in simple but stark terms as: “two ongoing wars, a planet in peril, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”  What is equally striking is how remarkably a national effort for green energy would help address that entire retinue of daunting problems Obama identified.

Beyond green energy, there’s a shamefully-neglected infrastructure about to collapse around our ears.  And despite rumors of its demise, manufacturing is still open for business in the USA, but needing the kind of encouragement that competing countries long ago understood as worth the investment.

One shortage we’re unlikely to face is suggestions, recommendations, demands and imperatives to the new President from every sector of our society.  There’s lots to do, and a huge sense of pent-up demand after eight years of an administration with a relatively narrow agenda.

Obama will be hearing from everyone, needing everything. But if he and his staff can cut through the din as well as they did during months of campaign cacaphony, they will identify the major chord underlying all the wailing — it’s the need for jobs, jobs, jobs.

Last week NASA announced they would do a full re-bid of the next generation of spacesuits.

That’s not the final prize, but it’s still a victory for Hamilton Sundstrand, hourly and management, to be in the running in what looks like a fair competition for the contract.

Earlier this year, HSD was shut out by a NASA decision to give the contract to a Houston-based company.  That contract was rescined due to “irregularities” in the evaluation procedure.  To their credit, HSD decided to challenge NASA’s decision — a bold move considering that HSD’s “Space, Land and Seas” division essentially has one customer — NASA.

Without breaking our arm to pat ourselves on the back, part of this story is also about GrowJobsCT.  We encouraged IAM Local 743 to pursue the issue, and then got the staff of the CT Congressional delegation together to discuss the issue and how to encourage NASA to re-examine their decision.

US Senator Dodd immediately grabbed the ball and ran with it — writing to NASA, speaking with their Director, asking colleagues to communicate, and even coming to the Windsor Locks facility to confer with company and union officials and speak with employees and the press.

The rest of the Congressional delegation did their part as well, without exception.  All five US Representatives and both Senators wrote to NASA expressing their concern about keeping the work in Connecticut, and the remarkable record the HSD spacesuit has achieved — 40 years of flawless performance.

Nothing is final yet — all of this just gives HSD the ability to compete fairly for the contract.  But that’s all that should be expected.  With a fair competition, the “Experienced Spacesuit Team” at HSD is ready, willing and able to continue making spacesuits that perform flawlessly.

Welcome to the new and improved GrowJobsCT web site!  We hope you will check here often to get the latest news, analysis and opinions about jobs, manufacturing, economic development and how best to keep Connecticut a great place to work, live and raise a family.
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