More than a year after the Pentagon reprimanded Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. for quality issues, one in five responding to an internal Sikorsky survey indicated they do not receive the training they need to do a quality job.
Just 56 percent of employees surveyed responded favorably to the training question in a spot poll conducted in November and December 2007, the same percentage in an identical poll conducted in March 2007 by Sikorsky”™s Hartford-based parent United Technologies Corp. Twenty-one percent responded negatively and 23 percent were neutral on the question.
UTC and Stratford-based Sikorsky are the largest employers in Connecticut and Fairfield County, respectively.
“We and the union both recognize that training is an opportunity for us,” said Sikorsky spokesman Paul Jackson. “It”™s especially challenging when you consider the increase in our (work force) during the past year.
Sikorsky now employs 8,350 people in the Fairfield County area, up from 7,400 at the close of 2006.
The polls followed a tense labor strike in the spring of 2006 that sparked a public plea from Connecticut”™s Congressional delegation for the sides to find middle ground, saying the stoppage threatened a potential $15 billion contract from the U.S. Air Force for search-and-rescue helicopters. The contract went to rival Boeing Co. and Sikorsky filed a formal protest that has yet to be resolved.
Late in 2006, it was revealed the Department of Defense had excoriated Sikorsky over quality issues, as first reported by New Haven television station WTNH.
With Jeffrey Pino taking the reins as Sikorsky president just as the strike hit, UTC subsequently dispatched its No. 2 executive Louis Chenevert to oversee a reengineering of Sikorsky”™s production.
Sikorsky would pull out of its tailspin, closing out 2007 with a $7.4 billion military contract for Black Hawk and Seahawk helicopters.
Sikorsky will soon learn whether the contract signaled a vote of confidence in its operations. The company hired Harris Interactive Corp., a Rochester, N.Y.-based polling company, to survey its U.S. government customers and expects to receive the results by the start of May.
Last week, Sikorsky began inviting commercial customers and foreign governments to complete a Harris Interactive poll.
Sikorsky outsources pilot training to a West Palm Beach, Fla., flight school operated by FlightSafety International Inc., which recently established similar services in the United Kingdom. In Sikorsky”™s bid to win the Air Force search-and-rescue contract, the company named Rockwell Collins Simulation & Training Solutions L.L.C. as its training partner.
Sikorsky has scheduled a new employee survey for June, at which point it will get an updated read on the mindset of its employees.
The employee survey results did not appear to be due to any sour grapes rotting on the vine from the strike ”“ 76 percent of employees responded favorably to the statement that they would recommend Sikorsky as a good place to work. And from 24 percent of Sikorsky employees surveyed in the initial UTC survey, just 21 percent of those surveyed most recently indicated they do not receive the training they need to do a quality job.
With 61 percent of employees participating in the survey, the results would seem to indicate accurately the mood of the company”™s work force.
Meanwhile, in less than a year some of those workers will have the opportunity to cast a vote on an entirely different matter ”“ a new contract.
Teamsters Local 1150, the union that led the strike, re-elected Rocco Calo last fall to a third term as principal officer, secretary and treasurer, along with Harvey Jackson as president. An electrical installer, Calo has worked for Sikorsky since 1987.
In a newsletter to union members, Harvey Jackson noted Sikorsky faces a new labor deadline of February 2009.
“We began talking about ”˜contract 2009”™ back in April of 2006,” Jackson said. “The focus on that will intensify.”
