On Monday, we talked with Grace McCaffery about ST Aerospace laying off the Chilean workers. This morning, we heard that the company is working with them.
Mayor D.C. Reeves discussed the issue on “Real News with Rick Outzen” this morning.
“First of all, look, I don’t care and what occupation, we don’t want people who live in the city to lose their jobs for any circumstance,” he said. “I appreciate Grace coming on Thursday and discussing these things and to be advocate for people… That said, and as she acknowledged Thursday as well, it’s difficult to comment on the circumstances of the HR department of a private company, and certainly the city does not.”
The mayor said the use of foreign workers at the airport MRO demonstrates the importance of the Pensacola State College training program and its A&P academy. “At the end of the day, we’re in dire need of finding talent and it’s why you can’t go to anything ST-related or airport-related without me saying, you’ve heard me say it Rick five times at least, how vital I believe that school to be.”
He added, “The goal here is to improve the quality of life for families in this city. And I know that’s ST”s goal and certainly ours, but at the end of the day, you have an operation to run.”
ST Aerospace must find a way to service the UPS planes on the tarmac. “To be fair, wherever those jobs are coming from, I don’t know that it helps the community to say, ‘Well, we’re going to not work. We’re going to work on less planes now until we have these jobs filled by Americans.’ ”
He believes that the hiring of aviation mechanics from Chili and possibly other countries was a “necessity based on trying to find talent.”
“I think we’re all on the same wavelength here,” Mayor Reeves said. ” This project came here and was incentivized to come here to help create opportunity for people in the City of Pensacola. So again, I can’t speak to what their HR strategy is or what they’re doing in terms of hiring and onboarding and offboarding.But, I think overall, mission-wise, we all want the same thing.”
Dig Deeper:
I listened to Grace’s presentation to the Pensacola City Council on Thursday, June 18. Here are my notes:
Hispanic Resource Center of Northwest Florida founder Grace McCaffery appeared at the Pensacola City Council’s Leroy Boyd Forum to inform the leaders that ST Engineering had laid off 45 Chilean aviation mechanics at its Pensacola and Mobile sites.
She read letters from three engineers who were laid off in late June and early July. McCaffery explained, “They simply want you to know that the company that brought them here could have allowed them a bit more grace. They’re all aware that the city council cannot intervene in employee issues of a private company. However, they are also aware of the importance a company like this is to a community like Pensacola, and they feel it is important for you to know about their experience in working with such a valued company.”
The workers said that ST Engineering has hired approximately 250 Chilean workers, and company executives have told them that the company would not renew any of their visas.
“Though we had no written contract, it was the description of a long-term employment that drew us here,” said Ulises Rojas. “If we had known that my employment would be only a year, we would likely not have uprooted our families to come here. Many who attended the same recruiting event I did sold their homes and left their stable jobs in Chile. They bet everything on this opportunity.”
Samuel Navarrete had a similar story. He said, “At the end of 2022, I learned that an American company was looking for aviation mechanics. News of this spread through Chilean national media. You have copies of one of the promotions that was published in the national media there. Chile personnel from the company were also interviewed who said they were working for them for years, that they had long-term work projects for around eight to 10 years.”
Navarrete retired from the Chilean Air Force, where he had served for 22 years and specialized in aviation mechanic. “After a three-month probation, I brought my wife and daughter. They integrated perfectly. My wife attends English classes at a local church, and my daughter completed ninth grade with academic distinctions in English as a second language at Pensacola High School.”
His termination was unexpected. “When we decided to apply to this company, we knew that we could be fired at any time, but we did not expect the process to be so poorly managed. The way companies handle these situations directly impacts the perceptions and willingness of other professionals to work here. We must ensure fair and transparent processes for all workers protecting their rights and dignity.”
Juan Galvez began his employment with ST Engineering in April 2023. The company suspended him on May 31 and later terminated by phone effective immediately on June 28.
“I served the Chilean Air Force from Jan. 1, 2001, until the day before I moved to Pensacola. My children and I were excited about a job offering ample and lasting work. Moving to the United States is a great commitment with significant economic and emotional toll on family,” he told the city council.
“I’m a responsible person who follows the law, who pays taxes, and who has never been involved in illegalities,” Galvez said. “I was aware that I could be fired without reason. I worked for more than a year with the company being highlighted by my superiors, complying with schedules and holidays in support of the company’s objectives. Even so, they made no effort to notify me in advance of any problems with my visa. We deserve to be treated better.”
I’ve been a supporter of ST from the beginning and still am, and in particular it is the workforce component of it that drew my support. Mayor Reeves is spot on in so many of his comments, including the crucial need to get the school and training pumping on full cylinders.
Here’s the issue, and it’s not one of DC’s making: there are *plenty* of engineers in this country who would have loved to learn of this opportunity and relocate to Pensacola for it.
Was there a nation-wide marketing campaign to draw them here? If so, what *was* the marketing to draw American engineers to Pensacola, and if the efforts were anything less than what they put forth in Chile, why? It wouldn’t have had anything to do with paying less now, would it?
I’m sure that the mayor and his administration are already well aware of the terms of the oversight contracts with ST–if any–and whether ST had a legal right to recruit out of the country using our tax dollars to do it.
If it’s legal (more than likely), then it’s a sign that the people who were drawing this stuff up on the Pensacola side were out of their water and needed better advisory on how to peg stuff down so there were guardrails. Which then puts a bigger burden on the current administration to get the company to understand it’s in everyone’s mutual interest to put in more firm hiring–and reporting–parameters, so that wages for workers are set and achieved so all positions at the company are workable and even attractive for workers coming from the proper subsets. Escambia County first, Santa Rosa next, the Panhandle, then SE, then on a national level, etc.
This is not to speak anything ill of the people who relocated from Chile, which is one of our favorite places on earth. An unbelievably beautiful country, with equally beautiful, welcoming people. Hopefully City, County, airport, and economic development leadership can all pull from the same rope in exercising a positive influence on the current situation, and ST’s future workforce decisions. Clearly there’s a need for more local engagement and understanding of their operations, and if whoever is tasked with that locally can’t do better than this, then it might be wise to change things up in terms of personnel or administrative and outreach capacity to optimize the current fall-out to everyone’s good, and to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again.