Transportation Industry

Company Watch - Vought Aircraft

AirGuide Business, April 14, 2008

Apr 14, 2008

Private-equity firm Carlyle Group owns about 90 percent of Vought Aircraft Industries stock. In 2004, Gov. Rick Perry pledged to give the company $35 million in state money in return for a promise to create 3,000 new jobs over several years at its assembly plants in Dallas and Grand Prairie. Two years later, the company announced it was cutting 600 jobs, mostly at the Dallas aircraft-parts assembly plant. A spokeswoman for the governor said the company had added 1,200 jobs. Apr 11, 2008

Defense contractor Vought Aircraft Industries agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle charges it discriminated against minorities and women in hiring, the Labor Department said Friday. The Dallas-based company entered into a consent decree under which it will pay back wages to 1,045 job applicants, the department said. Labor Department investigators found that Vought's hiring process disproportionately eliminated black and Asian men, and women of all races, who applied for assembly trainee and aircraft assembly beginner jobs. The company issued a statement saying it was equal-opportunity employer and that the charges stemmed from hiring in 2004 and 2005. The rejected applicants will divide nearly $1.4 million in back pay with interest, and the company will pay about $70,000 for applicants interested in taking an aircraft-assembly training program that will produce 35 applicant hires, the department said. The new hires will be paid salaries of $52,200. Apr 11, 2008

Vought Aircraft Industries has changed, after the agreement, its screening procedures and stopped using a test that the Labor Department said resulted in relatively few minority and female hires. The Labor Department said the company will monitor itself for compliance with federal employment law. The investigation was handled by an office of the Labor Department that enforces laws against discrimination in hiring by race, sex, color, religion, national origin, disability or veteran status. Vought makes aircraft doors and fuselage panels, thrust reversers, wings, and other components for military and commercial planes. Its parts are used in fighters, bombers and cargo planes made by Boeing and Lockheed Martin and civilian planes by Boeing and Airbus. Apr 11, 2008

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