Evan R. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Oregon–
Precision Cast Parts Corp is a metal casting and fabrication company owned by Berkshire-Hathaway and based in Lake Oswego, Oregon. While PCC produces a large variety of products, their primary business is defense and aerospace contracting. They specialize in parts such as jet engine turbines, aircraft frames, wings, fasteners and a wide variety of other parts. Over the years, they have acquired many other companies in the industry and now have operations all around the world. As their business has expanded, PCC has shown a brazen disregard for everything except profits. Their business model has been one of wanton pollution, abuse of workers and support of some of the most brutal regimes in the world.
They are one of the few companies in America capable of casting large titanium parts, and so they have become a vital contractor for both civilian aerospace and military. According to their internal documents, around a quarter of their aerospace revenues come from military contracting.
PCC’s business is spread out through a kaleidoscope of global sub-units operating under dozens of names. To give an example, there is an ongoing 36 billion dollar contract to Lockheed-Martin for the sales and maintenance of F-35 fighter jets. Many of the subcontractors for this are PCC subsidiaries. This contract is for only one of 20 lots of F-35s, which are currently in service all around the world. All of them are full of PCC made parts.
PCC subsidiaries Walden’s Machine, Wyman-Gordon, Shur-Lock and SPS Technologies are listed on this contract alone. The company operates under many other names such as Avibank, Arerospace Dynamics, Helicolmb, Fatigue Technology International, Titanium Metals Corp, Special Metals Corp and dozens more. PCC has six divisions, each of which has dozens of subsidiaries. PCC’s Aerostructures division, which makes large structural parts for aircraft has 17 alone. This atomization means that it can be very difficult to track down all the tendrils of this company. However, their reach is long and incredibly widespread.
PCC doesn’t just make new aircraft; they also have an extensive parts division which focuses on older models. Primarily through their Avibank and SPS subsidiaries, they market thousands of parts for “legacy platforms” such as the F-15 and F-16 fighter jets along with a variety of military helicopters. PCC builds everything from the structural members and wings, engine parts, and the fasteners that hold it together. They have also expanded beyond aviation and make parts as diverse as artillery carriages, missile bodies, suspension and chassis components and gun barrels.
These so-called “legacy platforms” are some of the most heavily used aircraft in the world. Over 4000 F-16s have been built and it is in service with 25 nations, while the larger and more expensive F-15 is trusted only to America’s closest allies in Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Israel, which relies extensively on both aircraft. The F-16 still makes up most of the Zionist combat aircraft with 174 units, with the F-15 in second place with 66 units. Without the need for their fragile and expensive F-35 stealth fighters owing to the enclave’s lack of any air defense, most of the genocidal air campaign against Gaza has been carried out by these older, cheaper aircraft.
To give a more concrete example of just how deep this all goes, each type of part made for the US military is issued a national stock number (NSN) to track inventory. By using these NSNs, we can start to get an idea just how much PCC and its subsidiaries provide for the government. Avibank holds over 6100 NSNs. SPS Technologies holds over 13,000. These are only two out of dozens of PCC contractors. When all PCC subsidiaries are added up, they provide over 20,000 of the parts needed to kill people in Gaza and worldwide.
PCC is more than just a prolific arms dealer, however. The company has aggressively and negligently damaged its community for decades, as the silently complicit local politicians do nothing more than slap them on the wrist.
PCC Poisons Portland
According to the University of Massachusetts, PCC is the largest and most brazen polluter in the nation. A full one third of that pollution comes from its three Portland area facilities. Although PCC disputed the study, its results were already obvious for everyone in the area. In 2011, the Structural Titanium facility in Milwaukee released a plume of toxic, orange nitrogen dioxide after a power outage which led to evacuations of entire neighborhoods.
The cloud was so toxic that the neighborhood was evacuated, but the state fined PCC only $30,000. While the company claims that they are trying to clean up, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality website shows that in the years since 2016, the company has done little more than drag its feet, and is still in the first “emissions inventory” phase. No action has been taken to remedy the pollution.
Protesters have been targeting the company, particularly its large parts campus in Milwaukie, OR, for almost a decade now. In 2020, the state released a paper claiming that the facility was safe, however the courts found otherwise.
After years of no action, protesters filed suit, and in 2022 they finally won a settlement from PCC after it was revealed that their emissions of toxic metals such as nickel, radioactive cobalt, lead, and arsenic vastly exceeded legal levels. The court case went on for years and included over 170,000 internal documents from PCC, proving that they had knowingly released huge amounts of toxic chemicals. PCC was forced to pay out a settlement of 22.5 million dollars, the largest in Oregon’s history.
When PCC finally complied with the state’s air quality monitors, it did so in an extremely negligent manner, intentionally running tests wrong to fudge the numbers. To their credit, the DEQ noticed this and allowed PCC yet another chance to correct it. PCC finally released legitimate information in 2023, and the tests (it should be noted that the tests were carried out by a contractor owned by GE Power systems, themselves massive polluters) show that PCC still exceeds the legal limits of toxic chemicals such as arsenic, cobalt, antimony, chromium, and nickel.
For as much harm as PCC inflicts on the community, it inflicts far more on its workers. For years, employees have tried to organize the company to address widespread safety and health concerns inside the facility. The first attempts came in 2013, when a unionization campaign failed by a slim margin after the company implemented a full-court press to bust the union.
HR managers called employees into one-on-one meetings to denounce the unions, threatening layoffs and calling in private investigators to stalk union organizers, using photos of them trying to talk to their co-workers after hours as propaganda.
The president of the company, Kevin Stein, even wrote an apology letter which was sent to all employees, apologizing for “putting them into this situation” and denounced union greed even as they cut pensions for all new hires in an era of record profits.
“We failed to listen enough and we failed to communicate enough with our employees. We have learned a valuable lesson during the past couple months, and I commit to you that we will work hard to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We hear you!”-PCC President Kevin Stein.
They did nothing to make sure it didn’t happen again. Union campaigns continued, and in 2017, there was a successful campaign to organize the company’s welders under the International Union of Machinists (IUM.) The company responded with silence. They simply refused to recognize the union, counting on the Trump-era NLRB to back them up. However, PCC’s violations of federal law were so egregious that even judges appointed by Trump ruled against them, saying that IUM’s unionization drive was perfectly legal and ordering PCC to recognize the union.
PCC did not. They continued to appeal, dragging the issue out in court for years. The workers refused to give up. They continued to fight against PCC in the courts, and in 2021 yet another judge ruled that PCC had violated the worker’s rights, failed to negotiate in good faith and must recognize the union.
PCC, in brazen violation of two judicial orders, still refused to even acknowledge the union. In fact, PCC only intensified their efforts to break the machinists. The company started aggressively laying off the welders and by 2022, only 64 of the original 100 who voted to unionize remained. With the union weakened, PCC brought in a third party called the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation who started a de-certification campaign against the union, eventually filing a legal petition on May 27th. The union filed three separate complaints against the company during this time, but no action was taken, and PCC tightened the screws.
As non-union workers were given raises, shift differentials and lower cost benefits, union workers were frozen out. The lack of a collective bargaining agreement meant that the company was not obligated to give the union workers anything, even though the company was refusing to negotiate.
By November 2022, the company finally won. The remaining workers, now exhausted and out of money to keep fighting, voted to decertify the union which had been legally recognized three times. To date, PCC has faced no consequences for this brazen violation of their workers’ rights, and it remains a non-union shop despite ever rising profits. On their jobs portal, PCC makes no mention of starting pay, only describing it as “adequate” and “competitive.”
PCC workers casting a part. (The Oregonian)
As America and its proxies endless wars drag on and on, PCC make out like bandits. In the years since 9/11, at least 4.5 million people have died as a result of America’s grotesque “war on terror.” Hundreds of thousands have died from the Zionist aggression in the Middle East since October 7th reignited the flame of Palestinian resistance. As I write this, airplanes full of PCC parts are still dropping bombs on Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
PCC’s profits have been as enormous as their complicity.
In 2023 their revenues increased 22% to 9.3 billion. In 2024, they went up again by another 1.8 billion. In 2016, the last year that numbers were published, CEO Mark Donegan was paid $12 million in wages and cashed $100 million in stock options. Decade old numbers list his net worth at $200 million, however that number has only increased over time. In 2020, he sold his Southern California vacation home for $61 million. Berkshire-Hathaway and PCC no longer disclose Donegan’s pay, although they did note that in 2023, executives sold over $100 million in PCC stock.
Every time America bombed a school, hospital or power station to terrorize the Iraqi people with “shock and awe”, PCC’s stock prices went up. Every time a village in Afghanistan was wiped off the map with JDAMs in reprisal attacks, PCC’s made a sale. Every time America crushed another country, destabilized another government and caused another refugee crisis, PCC’s turned a profit. Year after year, death after death, the blood and tears of millions of families filled their coffers. However, in the quest for ever increasing revenues, the company was not satisfied with mere war profiteering.
The nature of capitalism calls for endless growth, and so PCC cut corners to save money, poisoning the community as captured regulators did nothing but make excuses for their crimes. When that wasn’t enough, they turned to their own employees, breaking the law in broad daylight to maximize corporate returns at the worker’s expense.
From Portland to Baghdad to Gaza, the story remains the same. Workers die, PCC profits.
These are only a small portion of the crimes committed by Precision Castparts and their parent, Berkshire-Hathaway. To recount everything they have done would take entire books. PCC represents a particularly odious example of the predatory nature inherent to capitalism, but this is a machine built to convert human misery into profits for the elite, and its ravenous hunger can never be satisfied. As the rate of profit continues to decline, they will only grow bolder and more aggressive.
Of course, this sort of behavior is not unique to PCC. They are but one of many corporations which profit from the suffering and death of the world and its people.
The United States spends nearly 1 trillion dollars on defense per year, a defense budget of world conquest proportions which only increases regardless of administration. In the years since 9/11, the government has spent 14 trillion on the military, and more than half that goes to contractors. As our infrastructure crumbles, the standard of living of the average worker continues to decline and the government slashes thousands of jobs in the name of “efficiency”, the military budget still goes up. While the government tells us it has no money to spend on health, housing and welfare, they always find more money for the military and corporations like PCC.
Even in the depths of the worst housing crisis since the great depression, we could eradicate homelessness in America for a comparatively scant 8 billion dollars. We could end world hunger and malnutrition for $23 billion. For three trillion, the cost of only three years of military spending, we could rebuild all of America’s infrastructure, putting thousands to work with good-paying jobs and helping build a better future for the next generations.
We are told by the powers that be that this is the greatest and most efficient system ever devised, that there is no alternative to its rule.
The words of Lenin remain as relevant today as they were when they were first written.
As long as capitalism remains what it is, surplus capital will never be utilised for the purpose of raising the standard of living of the masses in a given country, for this would mean a decline in profits for the capitalists; it will be used for the purpose of increasing those profits by exporting capital abroad to the backward countries.
V. I. Lenin, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism.”
There is an alternative, if we are bold enough to seize it.
It is a system where workers have full democracy in their workplaces and where we no longer kill the many for the profits of a few. It is a system where the sweat and toil of the workers is used to benefit all humanity, not bomb and poison them. It is a system called Socialism, and we can implement it. The working people have the power to create a better world; if we organize and work together, we can overthrow this imperialist system and bring an end to this madness once and for all. If not for Gaza, then for ourselves, our communities, and our fellow workers.