White-Collar Cuts Expected to Save $100 Million : Pratt & Whitney to Eliminate 1,000 Jobs

Pratt & Whitney Aircraft said Wednesday that it is eliminating more than 1,000 white-collar jobs in a move that will eventually save $100 million a year and enhance its competitive position in the jet engine market.

The company said 283 employees, ranging from engineers and purchasing agents to vice presidents, would be laid off during the next 18 months, including 158 who were let go immediately.

The rest of the jobs, including 314 currently vacant positions, will be eliminated through attrition and not renewing 181 personnel contracts.

Two more rounds of job reductions among the company’s 19,370 salaried employees will be announced next month, spokesman Curtis Linke said.

The first round will eventually save the company an estimated $100 million a year, he said.

“Cost reductions are difficult, but eliminating unnecessary tasks and the reduction of staff are steps we must take to ensure a healthy future for Pratt & Whitney and all our people,” President Arthur E. Wegner said in a statement.

Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. of Hartford, Conn., has said a number of times during the past year that it needed to lay off employees to remain competitive with its chief rival, General Electric Co.

Pratt & Whitney has about 45,700 salaried and hourly employees worldwide, compared to 44,720 in 1982.

“It’s nothing dramatic,” said David Franus, an analyst at Forecast International in Newtown, a market research firm that follows the aerospace industry. “It is part of an ongoing attempt by Pratt & Whitney to pare its staff down, just to be leaner and meaner and more cost effective with GE.”

Philip Friedman, an analyst with Drexel Burhnam Lambert Inc. in New York, said: “The company for some time has been cutting costs and restructuring. . . . Certainly it will make them more competitive in the jet engine market.”