Corporate ineptitude in Navy contract looms over union drive

[unhappycamper]

http://peoplesworld.org/corporate-ineptitude-in-navy-contract-looms-over-union-drive/



Corporate ineptitude in Navy contract looms over union drive
by: Mark Gruenberg
August 5 2013

MOBILE, Ala. - Corporate ineptitude on a big U.S. Navy shipbuilding contract in Mobile, Ala., is looming over the latest organizing drive among Austal shipyard workers there, a drive run by the AFL-CIO's Metal Trades Department.

As a result, one point that department President Ron Ault makes to Pentagon officials to get them to ban Austal from using taxpayer dollars to defeat the union organizers is to explain that a unionized workforce at the yard would help solve the mess in Mobile.

MTD's drive at Austal USA is important for several reasons. One is that success would add yet another Navy-oriented shipyard full of union workers, preventing builders from undercutting union workers elsewhere. A second is unionizing Austal would be yet another beachhead - aiding underpaid, exploited workers - in the anti-union South.

Right now, there are two battles brewing in the Austal shipyard, where workers toil at constructing the littoral combat ship (LCS), a multipurpose warship that is supposed to be able to sail with a relatively small crew and easy ability to change missions by changing modules of high-tech equipment.