Many Workers Fear the ‘Worst Is Yet to Come’

McDonnell Douglas’ announcement Monday that it will lay off up to 17,000 workers, including 8,000 at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach and 400 at the Space Systems division in Huntington Beach, was greeted with weary resignation by employees and appeared to do little to dampen internal speculation about the troubled company’s future.

“Everybody’s pretty nervous,” said one MD-80 production worker outside the gates of the Douglas facility in Long Beach. “There’s a feeling that it’s inevitable, but the worst is yet to come.”

No special meetings were held to inform workers about the cost-cutting plan, and only the broad outlines of the layoffs were disclosed in a memo addressed “To All Teammates.” Some employees leaving work Monday afternoon were not aware that there had been a public announcement by the company, and the internal memo did not disclose specific layoff figures for individual plants.

“People don’t know what to believe,” said Terence Collins, a Douglas maintenance worker from Riverside. He said that, while he had once taken comfort in the belief that workers involved in commercial aircraft production would not be laid off, he was no longer as sure.

“There’s a sense of panic for a lot of people,” added Rhonda Robinson, an MD-80 electrical worker. “They’re cutting so many things at once.” She said the elimination of services, such as shuttle buses to transport workers from the parking lots at the sprawling aircraft plant, has hurt morale and heightened employee fears about the future.

Monday’s announcement followed a week of apocalyptic rumors about a possible bankruptcy filing or a Japanese buyout of Douglas. But few workers said they believed that the latest layoffs will calm the speculation.

“This is just going to add fuel to the fire,” said one MD-11 structural worker who, like several other employees, asked that his name not be used. He said morale has suffered not only because of the layoffs, but also because of increasingly strict management policies aimed at boosting production. Supervisors, added another worker, “are really cracking the whip.”

There seemed to be less sense of foreboding at the Space Systems division in Huntington Beach, where the layoffs are less severe, but employees were still worried. “It’s not that much of a shock, but (the number of layoffs) is higher than we anticipated,” said Dale Donnelly, a systems analyst. “It’s not going to diminish the stress completely.”

Another engineer, who asked not to be identified, called the announcement “depressing,” and scoffed at management’s explanation of the problem. “They blame it on defense cuts, but a lot of these are commercial programs.”

McDonnell officials provided no breakdown of how the layoffs would be split between military and commercial work.

Another engineer was upset about the cut in company contributions to the salaried savings plan, which he said amounted to a 3% pay cut and came as a complete surprise.

Still, a few of the employees interviewed expressed confidence that the company would find its way through the problems eventually. As one quality inspector put it, workers were relieved to “finally get some good, solid answers.”

And one Douglas worker expressed confidence that with the huge backlog of commercial aircraft orders, “even if I was laid off now, they’d probably call me back in January.”