Wichita ? Already reeling from layoffs that slashed their ranks, unions representing Wichita’s aircraft workers must now grapple with a new workplace reality after the sale of the Boeing Co.’s commercial airplane operations in Kansas and Oklahoma to a Canadian firm.

Fearing for their jobs, aircraft workers are more open to helping their employers reduce labor costs and bring new work to production lines. Some are growing leery of unions, spurning efforts to unionize one plant and trying to decertify an existing union in another plant.

The aircraft unions are facing the same harsh environment that that this week led to the fracture of the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest union, and the defection of more than 3 million members of the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union. Those dissidents want to focus away from electoral politics and more on finding new members to replenish the unions’ falling ranks.

“It is very clear in other industries, (unions) have lost a lot of power – most notably in airlines and certainly other manufacturing sectors. Aerospace unions are probably reading the handwriting on the wall,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Fairfax, Va.-based Teal Group.

Wichita – which calls itself the air capital of the world – is home to manufacturing plants for Boeing, Cessna Aircraft, Bombardier Aerospace and Raytheon Aircraft, along with more than 60 aviation subcontractors. The industry makes up 16 percent of Wichita’s employment, down from 26 percent before Sept. 11, 2001.

Even with the aviation sector recovering, many lucrative aircraft jobs are permanently gone – victims of outsourcing overseas, technological advances and leaner production lines.

Still, Aboulafia said he was “shocked” at the extent of concessions Onex Corp. has been able to get so far from former Boeing workers.

Union member Steve Schroeder, of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, holds a sign while rallying June 8 outside Boeing Wichita's Administration Building. Already reeling from layoffs that slashed their ranks, unions representing Wichita's aircraft workers must now grapple with a new workplace reality after the sale of the Boeing Co.'s commercial airplane operations in Kansas and Oklahoma to a Canadian firm.

“You can’t fault anyone,” said Bob Brewer, Midwest director for the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace. “We lost some ground. Anytime you go through a divestiture you are bound to be involved in concessionary bargaining – and that is not a good position to be in.”

Onex’s aerospace subsidiary, recently renamed Spirit Aerosystems Inc., won pay and benefit cuts from its biggest union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers; as well as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. SPEEA, its second-largest union, also approved benefit cuts coupled with wage increases for its two negotiating units.

The givebacks at Onex are reminiscent of those garnered by another Canadian firm, Bombardier Aerospace, which in 2003 won contract concessions from machinists in exchange, for a pledge to keep its Wichita plant open through at least 2006.

“The militant approach is unproductive,” Aboulafia said of union confrontations with management. “The only way to survive and grow is through cooperation.”

Earlier this year, Cessna Aircraft Co. workers rejected unionizing the plant in Independence, Kan., amid fears the company would build their new Mustang jet elsewhere.