Number of Employees Drops at 2 of Top 10 Companies
Employment at two of the San Fernando Valley-area’s 10 largest private companies dropped during the past year, while the work forces at most of the others remained largely unchanged, a Times survey has found.
The work force at ITT fell 30%, to 3,022, largely because the company sold its share in the former Sheraton Premiere hotel in Universal City and cut jobs at two subsidiaries. At Litton, 550 jobs, 8.3% of its Valley work force, were lost in two divisions.
At the area’s two largest employers, Lockheed California and General Motors, the number of workers remained about the same as the year before, although GM’s number would have tumbled if it had not recalled hundreds of workers it had laid off.
Year Ending June 30
The survey tracked employment for the year that ended June 30. It included employers from Burbank to Camarillo.
The top 10 companies account for an estimated 8% of the area’s work force of 740,000, according to David Hornbeck, the director of business research at the Bureau of Business Services and Research at California State University, Northridge. The same companies made the list this year as last year. Northrop, with its Newbury Park unit, almost made the top 10. The company employs about 2,000 in the Valley area.
Walt Disney Co. officials said slightly more than 2,000 people are employed at that company’s Burbank and Toluca Lake facilities. An exact figure was not available.
Lockheed remained by far the largest local employer. Its work force remained relatively stable, with 50 jobs added, spokesman Nick Durutta said. Employment there had declined 6% the previous year.
Durutta said the company, which makes defense products, expects few fluctuations in employment in the next few years as work continues on several contracts, including the P-3 Orion, a U. S. Navy anti-submarine aircraft. Existing orders will mean the aircraft’s production at Lockheed will last until 1990, he said.
Possible Surge
A surge in employment will come if Lockheed wins a contract at the end of this decade to build a new tactical fighter plane for the Air Force, Durutta said. The company is working on the fighter’s prototype, he said.
At GM, which became the Valley’s second-largest employer last year after it acquired Hughes Aircraft, more than 2,000 workers were laid off in July, 1986, when the second shift was eliminated at the Van Nuys assembly plant. The shift was reinstated in May, bringing the number of workers back to about 4,500, a spokesman said.
Employment at Hughes’ Missile Systems Group in Canoga Park dropped from 3,428 to 3,300. At the company’s Radar Systems Group in Van Nuys, it decreased from 190 to 135. Spokesman Mike Murphy attributed the decreases to normal business fluctuations.
GTE Corp., which barely nudged out MCA for fifth place on the list, was the biggest percentage gainer because it completed the shift of its General Telephone of California headquarters from Santa Monica to Thousand Oaks. MCA, which has its studios in Universal City, showed a slight gain, as did St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank.
Rockwell, which ranked third this year and last, showed a slight increase in employment. The number of jobs at the company’s Canoga Park-based Rocketdyne Division, which makes the main engines for the space shuttle, increased by about 100, to 6,800.
However, Rocketdyne officials said employment will take off in coming months. An estimated 1,000 people annually are expected to be hired over the next several years, the officials said.
Blue Cross of California, which has its Southern California headquarters in Woodland Hills, showed a negligible decrease in employment during the past 12 months. General Electric’s job decrease came about because of a continuing cost-reduction campaign at its NBC Studios in Burbank. Last year, General Electric acquired RCA, which owns NBC.
Reduction at Litton
Fourth-ranked Litton Industries, based in Beverly Hills, experienced a decrease in its Valley work force, mainly because of the winding down of a project at its Data Command Systems subsidiary in Agoura and cyclical business conditions that affected its Data Systems division in Van Nuys, company spokesman John Thom said.
Thom said that at Data Command, the work force dropped from about 550 to about 350 and that the Data Systems group now employs about 1,400--200 fewer than last year.
No. 7, ITT, showed a 30% decrease in people it employs locally, largely because the company shed its interest in the former Sheraton Premiere Hotel, which it owned along with MCA. The Sheraton Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of ITT.
ITT had employed about 500 people as clerks, cooks, bellhops and chambermaids at the luxury hotel before it was sold early this year to Cigna, a Philadelphia-based insurance company with extensive real estate holdings. The 24-story hotel is now known as The Registry Hotel.
ITT Gilfillan, a Van Nuys radar electronics division, cut 125 jobs because the company has sought to streamline operations through attrition and some layoffs, a spokesman said. The division now employs 1,875.
About 250 jobs were cut at ITT General Controls in Glendale when that division transferred some production to a City of Industry plant, a spokesman said. The division had employed about 550 people in Glendale a year ago.
THE VALLEY’S 10 LARGEST PRIVATE SECTOR EMPLOYERS
JUNE 87 JUNE 86 % Change Lockheed 14,310 14,260 +.35 General Motors 8,460 8,643 -2.1 Rockwell International 7,270 7,170 +1.3 Litton Industries 6,600 7,150 -8.3 GTE 5,505 4,770 +13.3 MCA 5,466 5,395 +1.2 ITT 3,022 3,929 -30% Blue Cross of Ca. 2,950 3,008 -1.9% St. Joseph Medical Center 2,535 2,450 +3.3 General Electric 2,137 2,212 -3.3%
Does not include workers at General Motors Acceptance Corp.
