The Paris Air Show—the largest and most prestigious in the world—draws thousands of aviation and aerospace companies looking for new products and technology and, in many cases, new manufacturing locations.
This year, representatives from Machinists (IAM) District 751 and SPEEA/International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 2001—their high-skilled members work at the Boeing Co.—are joining with Washington State officials to showcase the state’s aerospace industry and workforce.
The video above—produced by Kathy Cummings, Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) communications director—will be showing at the Washington State Pavilion at the Le Bourget Airport in Paris. In it union workers talk about the pride they take in producing the world’s best airliners, the skill and education level of the workers not just at Boeing, but throughout the states’ aerospace workforce that numbers about 84,000 people at 650 companies.
SPEEA member Michael Hochberg says that if he was “an aerospace company and wanted to find,”
a large pool of talented people to help me make airplanes or make other aerospace products, I would think the Puget Sound is a great place because we have literally generations of people who have worked in airplanes, kids who have grown up with aerospace…it’s just an amazing place to do business for an aerospace company.
The workers also talk about the positive role unions play making a quality product. Says SPEEA member Jennifer McKay:
I think a union is really an airline customer’s best friend and it’s a shareholder’s best friend. It’s a place that can work with the company’s leaders to make sure the right things happen, so that our products can be efficient and in the most cost-effective manner that we can get them out of here.
