Hundreds of machinists, mechanics, electricians and other skilled employees of defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin in Orlando and Denver walked off the job Thursday morning.
They’re on strike, alleging Lockheed Martin has engaged in unfair labor practices and failed to make a deal for a new contract with their union, the United Auto Workers.
“UAW members at Lockheed Martin voted 99.3 percent in favor of authorizing a strike,” UAW Region 8 Director Tim Smith shared in a statement.
“We are standing together in solidarity and we will have each other’s backs until we get a fair contract.”
There are nearly 500 Lockheed Martin employees in Orlando alone represented by the UAW, which has been in contract negotiations with their employer for months. The sprawling facility near Orlando’s tourism district off I-Drive houses “key Lockheed Martin operations,” according to the company’s website, with the Orlando facility largely focusing on missile defense and rotary systems. The UAW also represents a separate group of Lockheed Martin employees in Ocala, who are not currently on strike.
“Lockheed’s workers have to wait years and even decades before seeing a comfortable standard of living, while its executives are swimming in taxpayer dollars,” UAW Region 4 Director Brandon Campbell said in a statement.
“Lockheed is a textbook example of corporate greed, and I’m proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our members as they fight for their fair share.”
According to the union, while Lockheed Martin has offered “meaningful” pay raises for union members over the course of contract talks, other demands have been unmet. This includes a cost-of-living adjustment, quicker progression to top pay, a $15 minimum pay rate, making Veterans Day a paid holiday, and improvements to workers’ 401k and pension plans.
According to the union, it currently takes union members 18 years on the job — nearly two decades — for them to reach the maximum pay tier. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin, a company that reaped $24 billion in profits from 2022 to 2024, continues to score major contracts with the government worth billions of dollars. The company has raked in $1.7 billion in profit during the first quarter of 2025 alone.
“It would be nice for the future generations and everybody else coming in not to have to wait 18 years to provide for their family like I have,” said Michael Mahoney, a Lockheed Martin employee of 21 years and military veteran in Orlando.
“They say they support the military, they want to use the veteran status, but when it comes to really showing us — a veteran, you know — the appreciation that we deserve, it don’t feel like we get appreciated at all around here.”
A diverse crowd of more than 100 employees — young, old, Black, Hispanic, white — gathered outside the sprawling Lockheed Martin facility off Sand Lake Boulevard Thursday morning, holding UAW strike signs and earning honks from cars and semi-trucks driving by.
According to the Orlando Economic Partnership, Orlando is home to more than 7,000 Lockheed Martin employees. Not all are represented by the UAW. Others are nonunion or are represented by another union, like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Art Franco, president of the UAW Local 788, told Orlando Weekly their IBEW-represented co-workers at the Orlando location walked off the job Thursday morning in solidarity with their fight. Lockheed Martin’s customers include the U.S. Navy, Army, Marine Corps, Air Force “and dozens of foreign allies,” according to its website.
Only about 6 percent of workers in “right-to-work” Florida even have union representation, and fewer are dues-paying union members — below the national average. If you work in the private sector, you’re even less likely to belong to a union.
A spokesperson for the UAW told Orlando Weekly that this is the first strike by UAW Lockheed Martin employees in decades. Franco, the UAW official in Orlando, said he couldn’t recall the last time workers went on strike.
The strike at Lockheed Martin coincides with May Day, also known as International Workers Day, which is celebrated annually on May 1 by more than 160 countries (not including these United States). As In These Times reports, nearly 60,000 workers in the University of California system are also on strike today, while hundreds of workers across restaurants in Washington, D.C., are also reportedly rallying with allied organizations as part of their own organizing and contract campaign with the labor union Unite Here.
A national coalition of over 200 organizations, dubbed May Day Strong, has organized more than 1,000 actions over the next couple of days — from labor actions to rallies and sit-ins — across more than 1,000 cities in all 50 states to protest the “Billionaire agenda” under President Donald Trump.
While May Day has historically been a holiday to uplift the labor movement, this year the May Day Strong coalition is also rising up against cuts to public services, attacks on immigrants and other marginalized communities, and in support of strong union protections, fair wages and dignity for all workers.
You can find a list of May Day events occurring today through Saturday here.
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This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2025.
