The Machinists Union District Lodge 751 is calling on organizers to cancel an upcoming conference in Seattle that it says is designed to encourage Washington state aerospace companies to relocate to Mexico.
The union will protest the event and also Seattle-area companies taking part, including the Boeing Co., union District President Tom Wroblewski said Sunday.
“Our union is committed to growing Washington aerospace, not standing back and watching as it gets picked apart by foreign interests,” Wroblewski said in a prepared statement. “We’re not going to let anyone come into our backyard and poach some of our state’s best-paying, high-skill manufacturing jobs.”
The Mexico Aerospace Industry Conference is scheduled for Dec. 2 at the Hilton Hotel at SeaTac.
The event is being organized by MexicoNow magazine.
The event’s website touts Mexico as “the next frontier” for the global aerospace industry, and promises that Washington state aerospace companies that attend the conference will get to “interact with Mexico’s aerospace products plant managers,” union officials said.
The event is similar in concept to two conferences that have been proposed in Wichita, Kan., over the past year. Both were later canceled after Machinists Union members there threatened protests.
The union said that Boeing’s regional director for business development and global strategy in the Americas is among the scheduled speakers for the Seattle conference.
So is a senior vice president from GE Commercial Finance and an executive director from commercial real estate firm Cushman &Wakefield, according to the union statement.
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