Biggest union at BIW votes 'Not to endorse' GD welfare bill

The Free Press out of Rockland, Maine is the first to report that the S6 (Machinists) union at BIW voted last week not to endorse the GD/BIW corporate welfare bill known as LD 1781.  This is big news as the sponsors of the bill (the leadership of Democrat and Republican parties in Augusta) have long maintained that they were doing this bill on behalf of the workers.

It now appears that significant numbers of workers at the shipyard don't agree that GD needs $60 million from the state of Maine.

We've been told that S6 held a general membership meeting where about 100 workers turned up to vote on whether to support the controversial GD corporate welfare bill.  We heard it was a close vote but the union decided not to endorse.

Previously we heard from a reliable union source that one of the Machinists at BIW had read the front page story called Ship of Fools in The Bollard publication out of Portland.  As a result the worker began educating others in the union about GD's buybacks of $14.4 billion of their own stocks between 2009-2017 and the $21 million in salary for GD's CEO in 2016.

It appears that the rumblings among the workers was enough for S6 to sit this one out.  S6 is the largest of four unions at BIW.

Bruce