EADS is Welcome to Compete for U.S. Defense Contracts – But First It Must Clean Up Its Act

Issue #4: Anti-American workforce. 

Through its aircraft production division, EADS is a huge jobs program for anti-American labor unions that form the backbones of some of Europe’s most powerful socialist parties. By purchasing products that employ these workers, we will be feeding those who would rather bite our hand than shake it.

Anti-American Union Workers in Germany. The German socialist IG Metall union represents workers at Airbus Deutschland. Faced with losing thousands of jobs to the current Airbus reorganization, IG Metall is hoping EADS aircraft will start winning large DoD contracts. But the union, as a matter of policy and pride (its flag is still the Soviet-era red banner), openly shows hatred of the United States. The May 2005 cover of its magazine, Metall, contains a cartoon of a bloodsucking insect grinning and tipping its Uncle Sam hat. (It seems that German socialists national and otherwise – have, throughout modern history, liked to compare their enemies to insects.) In words reminiscent of an ugly era two or three generations ago, Metall ripped American businesses as “bloodsuckers” and “parasites.”²⁵ Union leaders and their Social Democrat Party friends defended the magazine after the liberal Free Democratic Party tried to get them to renounce the grotesque depiction of the United States. IG Metall Chairman Juergen Peters responded by calling the insect cartoon “a good caricature” of Americans.²⁶

EADS CASA Workers in Spain: On the Wrong Side. In Spain, where the EADS CASA division manufactures a variant of the CN-235 for the Coast Guard’s Deepwater program, the aircraft workers are even more militant than the Germans.

The General Confederation of Workers (CGT) union is virulently opposed to the war on terror, to the United States, and to the NATO alliance. Its red-and-black anarcho-Marxist flag indicates an alliance of two forms of extremism, and its official Rojo y Negro (Red and Black) newsletter shows a militancy seldom seen any more in industrialized democracies.  The EADS CASA union does not confine itself to empty words and symbols.  It engages in worrying behavior, including the following:

• Work stoppage in solidarity with Chavez. In January 2006, EADS CASA workers represented by the CGT held a work-stoppage to protest the United States’ invocation of nonproliferation regulations to prevent the company from selling its planes, which contain U.S.-made components, to the Chavez regime in Venezuela.²⁷
• Stirring up extremism in Mexico. The CGT appears to back any radical movement in Mexico that opposes the Mexican government and the United States. The union openly supports both anarchist and communist causes in Mexico that seek to destabilize the southern border of the United States. The union has its own “CGT Solidarity with Chiapas” committee to back the Marxist Zapatista guerrillas in the south of Mexico,²⁸ and publishes communiqués issued by the Clandestine Revolutionary Committee Indigenous Command of the Zapatista National Liberation Front (EZLN).²⁹
• Globalizing Latin American protests against the United States. The CGT promotes the international networking of protests against the president of the United States. Last month, the CGT spread anti-Bush propaganda to foster opposition to the American president’s visit to South America. The union’s rhetoric was incendiary, denouncing “the plans of imperialism for the region,” and stating, “The current policy of the U.S. government is to develop an offensive of North American power that extends across the entire planet.”³⁰
• Support for the global anti-capitalist movement. The CGT is part of the worldwide anticapitalist movement that openly supported, among other enemies of this country, Saddam Hussein. Currently, the union is planning for the global anti-capitalist protests to coincide with the G-7 summit in June.³¹
• Political activism far to the left of the Socialist Party. The CGT is so far from even the Spanish socialist mainstream that it blasts the ruling Socialist Party of Spain (PSOE) for having a “militarist policy.” The EADS CASA worker representatives waged a pressure campaign in February to slash Spain’s defense spending.  Rojo y Negro reported the signs that CGT workers carried at protests, including, “Arms Industries – Dismantle them,” “No army ever defends peace,” and “NATO No, Bases Out.”32
• Militantly anti-NATO attitudes. The CGT is steadfastly opposed to the NATO alliance, not simply to alliance policies, but to the very existence of the collective security system itself. In February, the CGT held a major anti-NATO protest in Seville – ironically, at the EADS CASA manufacturing hub where the company expects most of the future Joint Cargo Aircraft to be built. The demonstration coincided with the NATO leaders’ summit, and featured CGT denunciations of the alliance as the “global armed wing of the capitalist powers and their multinationals.”³³

Such sentiments and behavior are not the sort of things American taxpayers should subsidize.  They are certainly incompatible with the any workforce we want building aircraft for the United States military.