1,000 to Lose Jobs in Occidental Plan to Save $100 Million

Occidental Petroleum Corp. will lay off more than 1,000 employees--including 100 at its Westwood headquarters--to save about $100 million annually as part of a massive restructuring program, Chairman Ray R. Irani said Tuesday.

The layoffs, to be completed by September, would affect about 3.8% of the company’s non-agricultural work force of about 26,000 employees and touch virtually all staffing levels, from clerical workers to executives, Irani said in an interview with The Times.

Most of the layoffs will be in the company’s salaried work force, he said.

“We’re consolidating--eliminating functions that other people can do,” Irani said. Besides the headquarters cutbacks, Irani said, staffing will be reduced in the company’s chemical, pipeline, oil, gas and other operations.

Analysts praised the action, which fulfills a promise that Irani made last month to cut costs as part of a bold plan to rejuvenate the company by slashing its stock dividend, selling non-strategic assets, paring debt by $3 billion and leaving unprofitable lines of business.

“This is in line with expectations,” said Eugene L. Nowak, an industry analyst with Dean Witter in New York. “As they restructure and reshape the organization, they probably need fewer people.”

The staff cuts are in addition to work force reductions that would result from the sale of company subsidiaries, a spokesman said.

As a first step, Occidental’s corporate staff in Los Angeles and in other operating divisions around the country will be slashed from 772 to 563, including cuts in finance, public relations and legal staffs, Irani said.

About 100 of those employees will be furloughed from the Westwood headquarters building, where about 400 corporate staff work, a company spokesman said. So far, Irani said, 57 employees have been given pink slips.

“The only function that is spared is our investor relations program, which has four people in it,” Irani said.

“The reduction at the corporate level is significant,” Nowak said. “Oxy has never been as overstaffed there . . . as some other companies. They’ve always kept corporate operations pretty lean.”

Irani declined to detail where other layoffs would occur. But analysts speculated that some would result from Irani’s moves to divest the company of non-strategic operations, such as its petrochemical facilities in the Soviet Union, coal mines in China and hotels in Africa. Those businesses were pet projects of Irani’s predecessor, Armand Hammer, who died in December.

“A fair amount of people were attached to the activities that Irani doesn’t intend to pursue that were in some sense personal pursuits of Dr. Hammer,” said Frank P. Knuettel, oil analyst with Prudential Bache in New York. “As you get involved in far-flung activities, it does take a lot of extra legal help, clerical help, etc.”

He added: “Dr. Hammer was never one to want to cut back on anything.”

The layoffs are the first since September, 1989, when Occidental said it would trim 900 jobs from its domestic oil and gas operations.

The current layoffs would not affect the meat-processing company IBP Inc., in which Occidental holds a 51% interest. Irani has said Occidental will sell its interest in IBP as part of the restructuring. Including IBP’s employees, Occidental’s staff numbers about 53,000, a spokesman said.

On Tuesday, Occidental’s stock closed down 25 cents a share at $19.25 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.