Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with&nbsp;New Jersey Monthly&nbsp;magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.

Senior Editor

Gregory Polek

A regional labor court in Brazil has forced Embraer to suspend its plan to cut 20 percent of its 21,000-strong workforce after it agreed to hear a collective lawsuit filed by the company’s unions. Any further layoffs will now have to wait at least until the unions and management enter a process of court-administered mediation, scheduled for next Thursday.
The lawsuit claims that Embraer illegally carried out the layoffs without first negotiating with the Metalworkers Union of Sao Jose dos Campos and other union organizations. The company said in a statement today that it would appeal the court’s decision and that it carried out the dismissals “in strict compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.” 
It appears that the court’s intervention won’t affect the non-union employees slated for dismissal, and Embraer stressed that the decision “is preliminary and does not entail the restoration of the jobs to the dismissed persons.” 
When it first announced the layoffs on February 19, Embraer said it would remove an entire layer of its management structure and an unidentified number of production workers, while keeping the “significant majority” of the engineering workforce to continue new product development and technology. The plan originally called for layoffs at every facility the company operates, except for the Harbin-Embraer joint venture in China and the majority Embraer-owned OGMA plant in Portugal. 
The interim relief comes the day after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged Embraer CEO Frederico Curado to reconsider the scope of the cuts.

Court Halts Embraer Layoffs

A regional labor court in Brazil has forced Embraer to suspend its plan to cut 20 percent of its 21,000-strong workforce after it agreed to hear a collecti

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