T-1 Contract Employees at NAS Pensacola Will Decide to Remain "At Will" Employees or Organize for Collective Bargaining

Pensacola, FL, August 04, 2007 --(PR.com)-- Next Tuesday, August 7, 2007, the L-3 Vertex employees at NAS Pesacola, Florida, T-1 maintenance contract will be voting in a National Labor Relations Board supervised, secret ballot election, to decide wheter or not they want to be represented by the International Assocation of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Union, affiliated with the National AFL-CIO. This will be the second time these employees have had an opportunity to have such an election, after petitioning with the NLRB for such an election. The same Union, IAMAW, recently concluded negotiations for the pilots of the T-1 program at NAS Pensacaola, Florida, with their employer, Harris Enterprises, Inc. and Speed Aviation, Inc. The results of that negotiation effort, with Business Representative Danny Givens, of District Lodge 75 of the IAMAW, provides for a four percent wage increase for each year of the four year labor agreement, as well as a health and welfare benefit increase for the employees, which is currently at a rate of $3.14 per hour to a rate of $5.66 per hour on the last year of the contract.

This labor agreement was ratfied by the T-1 membership of Local Lodge 2902, Monday afternoon and took effect today, August 1, 2007, and will expire on July 31, 2011. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District Lodge 75 have negotiated for and represent over 1000 contract employees at NAS Pensacola on nine service contracts and approximately 650 contract employees at NAS Whiting Field on six sevice contracts at that location. The IAMAW, District Lodge 75, also represents approximately 150 civil service employees on two contracts at NAS Pensacola as well. IAMAW District Lodge 75 covers the entire state of Alabama, the panhandle of Florida and a few contracts in Mississippi and Georgia as well. There are over 6500 memers in the IAMAW District Lodge 75, in 14 Local Lodges, covering 64 negotiated labor agreements.

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