Eastern Iowa government leaders are lobbying to try and win thousands of jobs that are on the line this year as the Department of Defense chooses the company that will build re-fueling tankers for the Air Force. Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba said the 40-billion dollar contract will be awarded to either Boeing or the Airbus company in Europe.
Gluba says awarding the contract to domestically based Boeing would be in the best interest of America, and the people of the Quad Cities. Gluba says Boeing has promised to build 85 percent of the plane in the U.S. and that would support 16-hundred jobs, and have a 60 million dollar economic impact.
"We want to jobs here in this country, and not see jobs made and created overseas, especially with American tax dollars," Gluba says. Some of those jobs would probably be at Alcoa in Riverdale, Iowa, Carleton Life Support Systems in Davenport, and Rockwell Collins and Data Link in Cedar Rapids. Skip McGill, president of the Steelworkers Union at Alcoa, says his members already supply substantial amounts of aluminum to Boeing, and even to Airbus.
McGill says this contract would require the plant to run at capacity and maybe require them to expand. Gluba says the Defense Department will make its decision in the next one to two months, so letters and calls to members of Congress and the Department of Defense should be made soon.