Lockheed to Eliminate 700-800 Jobs to Cut Costs

Lockheed Corp. will eliminate 700 to 800 jobs during the next year at plants in Burbank, Palmdale and Santa Clarita under company plans to reduce operating costs, a Lockheed spokesman said Monday.

Spokesman James Ragsdale said the jobs will be cut through retirements and normal attrition in addition to layoffs. He could not say what percentage of the job cuts would come through layoffs, but he noted that in a normal year, 200 employees retire and several hundred more leave for other reasons.

The Lockheed division affected by the cuts, Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co., has reduced employment by almost half, to 15,400 workers, as production of various aircraft--such as the L-1011 commercial airliner and the P-3 submarine surveillance plane--has been phased out over the past eight years.

Although some of the lost jobs will be salaried, many will be wage positions paying $13 to $17 per hour. The company’s goal is to reduce its operating costs by 13% in 1989.

Union Spokesman

A spokesman for the union representing the company’s hourly workers said it had been told as recently as December that the company hoped to avoid further reductions. Ragsdale said he was not aware of such statements to the union.

“We had gotten indications that things should pick up in the early 1990s,” said Don Nakamoto, editor of American Aeronautics, the newspaper of the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, District 727. He said the company hoped to avoid any job reductions in 1988.

Nakamoto said Lockheed’s $600-million contract to design an updated submarine surveillance aircraft should create more jobs at plants in Burbank, Palmdale and elsewhere. But Nakamoto also said that Lockheed planned to continue reducing its Burbank operations, moving production activity north to Palmdale and elsewhere.

“It is an alarming situation,” Nakamoto said. “We realize that this is due to the fact that there is a lull period in the production cycle, but our members are worried about it.”