Berman Criticizes Boeing for Importing Workers : Palmdale: Despite thousands of layoffs in the Valley, the company is bringing employees from Seattle to work on the B-2.
The Boeing Co. is wasting millions of dollars by importing production workers from Seattle to Palmdale to work on the B-2 Stealth bomber rather than hiring “a trained and available work force in the region,” asserts Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City).
In remarks prepared for delivery on the House floor during the upcoming debate on funding the embattled bat-wing bomber, Berman cites Boeing’s action as “another example of the irresponsible manner in which taxpayers’ money is being frittered away on the B-2 program.”
Berman, a longtime opponent of the B-2, is reacting to the recent disclosure that about 450 Boeing aircraft workers have been brought to Palmdale and housed in hotels and apartments at a cost of more than $10 million a year, even though thousands of aerospace workers have been laid off in Southern California in the past year.
This expense is being billed to the Air Force as part of the $62.8-billion program.
Boeing maintains that it tried to hire workers locally but could not find those with the special skills required to work with composite materials, the reinforced plastics that make up much of the B-2 bomber.
“Looking at the picture in total, we think we have made more than a good-faith effort to hire locally,” Boeing spokesman John Kvasnosky said Monday. “Any suggestion we’re somehow insensitive to the economic needs of the community down there is uncalled for.”
Berman, whose 26th District in the east San Fernando Valley includes many recently laid-off defense workers, disagrees.
“According to a range of industry experts, many of those now unemployed in California have more experience in this area than the individuals being brought in by Boeing,” Berman says in his remarks. “Laid-off workers from Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas are struggling to rebuild their lives after decades of service to our nation’s defense.”
Berman has been involved in seeking to help employees at Lockheed, which recently laid off 2,750 aircraft workers in Burbank, many of whom had extensive experience in working with exotic composites on other military aircraft. Lockheed plans to leave its Burbank facility, which is in Berman’s district, and move to a site in Georgia.
At roughly $840 million each, the B-2 is the most costly weapon in U.S. history. There is intense debate in Congress over the bomber’s future because of the expense and questions about the strategic need for it. Boeing is a subcontractor to Northrop Corp., which is building the planes at its facilities in Palmdale and Pico Rivera.
The Bush Administration has scaled back its plans from 132 planes to 75. It has requested funds for two planes in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 in addition to the 15 B-2s already in the pipeline. The House Armed Services Committee has included no new funding for the B-2 in its defense appropriations bill; the Senate version of the measure includes $4.5 billion for the bomber.
Berman plans to deliver his prepared remarks when B-2 funding is debated as part of the defense appropriations bill. Consideration of the measure has been delayed as lawmakers continue negotiations over the deficit-reduction package.
Berman has consistently opposed the B-2 program, even though it provides many jobs for constituents in his district. Northrop employs about 12,200 in Southern California to build the planes, which are made from high-tech materials intended to evade radar in the event of a nuclear war.
“The strategic purposes it seeks to meet can be easily met by other weapons we have or are developing,” Berman said Monday. “Given the state of U.S.-Soviet relations, the existence of these other weapons and the incredible cost to taxpayers, this is really an unconscionable expenditure of funds now.”
The program’s defenders, however, insist that the rapid U.S. deployment in the Middle East in response to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait has demonstrated the need for the B-2, which can carry a heavy bomb load over long distances.
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), a B-2 supporter whose 35th District includes part of Palmdale, said through a spokesman, “Saddam Hussein may be giving the B-2 new life.”
But, like Berman, Lewis maintained: “I have not seen adequate proof of Boeing’s efforts to hire qualified workers locally to substantiate bringing in people from out of state. The pool of aerospace workers familiar with this project is larger in Palmdale and throughout Southern California than anywhere else in the country.”
Times staff writer John Chandler, in Palmdale, contributed to this story.
