Scab plane crashes on test flight, kills pilot

by Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the June 29, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

The effort by McDonnell Douglas to produce high-performance military aircraft behind Machinist union picket lines at its St. Louis facility resulted in the crash of a multi-million-dollar high performance Navy fighter plane and the death of its pilot on June 19. The plane, an F-18, costs between $38 and 63 million each, depending on equipment. The crash was but the latest in a series of setbacks suffered by the nation's fifth largest aerospace manufacturer in less than a week.

Earlier the City of St. Louis adopted a resolution calling upon MD to cease its practice of outsourcing jobs and the Missouri AFL-CIO launched a "Smack Mac Back" campaign to raise $2.5 million to support the families of MD strikers.

The strike began June 5 after 87 percent of the members of Machinists District 837 voted down a proposal allowing the company to continue the practice of outsourcing work to non-union plants and imposing additional costs of health insurance on union members.

Bates, a spokesperson for District 837 called MD's effort to continue production "insane and reckless. They have chosen a path that is fraught with peril," he told the World.

"You can't expect a foot doctor to do brain surgery," he said, "and there is no way McDonnell Douglas can produce these aircraft with unskilled workers, be they strike breakers from out-of-state or engineers and other salaried employees."

MD claimed that the F-18 involved in the fatal crash was built in February. But Bates said the plane underwent "complex modifications after it was built and that work was completed by supervisory personnel." He added that MD had attempted to cover up details of the crash and had assumed the lead role in the investigation until removed by the National Transportation Safety Board. "It was a classic example of the fox watching the chicken coop," he told the World.

Newspaper accounts of the strike report that MD had an inventory of nearly complete aircraft when the strike began and that the company planned a dozen test flights during the week beginning June 17.

Bates said strikers at the sprawling St. Louis facility were "high" over the decision of the Missouri AFL-CIO to organize a campaign to collect $5 each from the state's half-million members. "It shows the community of workers in action," he said.

Don Owens, Missouri AFL-CIO secretary treasurer, described the Smack Mac Back campaign as the way to "show our capability to win strikes - to show that strikers can prevail. We have to come together in order to keep a strike from going on forever," he said when interviewed in his office in Jefferson City.

Pointing out that MD, ranked second on the list of military contractors, is "dependent on tax dollars which belong to the American people," a June 14 resolution adopted by the St. Louis Board of Aldermen said that more than 5,000 machinists have lost their jobs at MD because "work once done here has moved to Finland and Switzerland; to Georgia and Arizona."

The resolution, introduced by Alderman Kenneth Jones, calls on MD "to stop its practice of outsourcing our workers' jobs" and upon President Bill Clinton "to use the power invested in his office to support the striking workers and their families."