A lot of Teamsters are pissed off with United Airlines’ proposed plan to outsource 4,500 San Francisco Bay Area jobs, and the union is not alone with what it thinks of UAL. Earlier this week hundreds of union supporters joined Teamster General President Jim Hoffa and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on the steps of City Hall to protest UAL’s plan to cut these jobs from its San Francisco International Airport (SFO) facility.

This sleaziness is not new stuff for UAL. It is known that they currently outsource 45 percent of all its maintenance work to foreign repair stations that are not held to the same standards as their U.S.-based counterparts. There’s something to think about on your next flight … who the hell fixed that thing and did they know what they were doing?

During these strange and unusual economic times for working Americans, it is hard to even fathom what this could mean for the individual worker, let alone the whole community in which he or she lives. Among the issues confronting these hard working people is the fact that a lot of UAL’s outsourcing took place on the clock of the current union representing the mechanics.
 
“In Indianapolis, United closed down the maintenance base and thousands lost their jobs and it devastated the community,” said Rich Petrovsky, an airline mechanic at the SFO facility. “Its time to stop outsourcing and mechanics at United are drawing the line. We are working with the Teamsters now and we say to United enough is enough.”

Petrovsky is one of the 9,300 UAL mechanics nationwide voting on whether to retain the Teamsters Union as their bargaining representative. Under their current representation, mechanics have seen thousands of jobs leave the country unchecked. The proposed closure of the SFO facility is just the latest threat to American jobs by UAL.

“The Teamsters Union will work tirelessly to make certain that the San Francisco maintenance facility remains open,” Hoffa said. “United must treat you as the highly trained and valuable workforce you are and respect the hard work you and all the United mechanics nationwide do day in and day out to ensure that our families fly on safe and secure aircraft.”

In addition to Newsom, the San Francisco UAL mechanics at the rally received the support of a number of state and local politicians including State Senators Leland Yee and Carol Migden, Assembly members Ira Ruskin and Fiona Ma and District Attorney Kamala Harris.
 
“These 4,500 United Airlines mechanic jobs represent the men and women who live right here in San Francisco," Newsom said. "They send their children to our public schools; support our local economy and contribute to the fabric of our community. I would like them to remain at SFO, and I would like to see them remain organized for the benefit of their families."

UAL’s outsourcing and plans to close the SFO facility has also drawn criticism on a national level with U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer and presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Barack Obama authoring letters of support for the workers.

“I am concerned about the future of the approximately 4,000 aviation mechanics who service aircraft at the San Francisco hub of United Airlines,” Boxer said in her letter of support to the airline mechanics. “It is essential to maintain a domestic aviation mechanic workforce that is highly skilled and provides a superior level of safety and security.”

Obama was equally critical of UAL’s actions.

“The practice of outsourcing aircraft maintenance overseas raises security concerns and pits our skilled mechanics making a middle class living against less skilled, less well protected workers abroad,” Obama said in his letter addressed to the Teamster Aviation Mechanics Coalition. “I applaud your efforts to organize a strong union at United Airlines, and look forward to working with you on the critical issue of outsourcing now and in the years ahead.”

The Teamsters have vowed to fight this to the bitter end. In other words, it is not always the best practice to piss off 1.4 million Teamsters!