Northrop Shutdown Devastates Work Force : Newbury Park: The plant’s operations will be moved to Hawthorne and Pico Rivera. About 1,800 employees are involved.

Workers at Northrop Corp., one of the largest employers in Ventura County, said they were devastated Wednesday after the company announced plans to shut down its Newbury Park plant, union officials said.

Northrop told workers in meetings throughout the day Wednesday that it is consolidating and will transfer its operations and employees to facilities in Hawthorne and Pico Rivera.

The move affects about 1,800 workers in Newbury Park, most of whom will be transferred to the defense contractor’s plants in the Los Angeles area. But the company expects to lose about 800 workers in the move, about half due to attrition and the other half to layoffs.

No layoff notices will be given out until January, company officials said, and the closure will take a year to complete.

The news ended months of speculation among Northrop workers that a closure was imminent.

“We were all devastated,” said Diane McNeil, vice president of the Northrop Ventura Employees Union, which represents about 800 hourly workers. “We just can’t believe that they did this. We really felt they would have an alternative to the plant closure.”

McNeil, who has coordinated supplies at Northrop for nine years, said some workers will suffer from having to commute nearly two hours each day to and from work. Pico Rivera is 61 miles from the Newbury Park plant. Hawthorne is 49 miles.

Peggy Devine, who has worked for 19 years at Northrop, said she was upset by the possibility that she may be transferred.

“I can’t move because my husband has business here,” Devine said. “I’ll have to make the drive for five years until I can retire.”

A company spokesman said the transfers were a necessary part of a general plan to reorganize the company and streamline operations.

Some of the first departments that will be moved from the Newbury Park plant are business development, financing and contracts, Northrop spokesman Mike Greywitt said.

The company has decided to sell its 670,000-square-foot plant on Rancho Conejo Boulevard, where it manufactures parts for Boeing 747s, missiles and military hardware.

To soften the blow of having to transfer, Northrop plans to provide buses for workers for six weeks, Greywitt said. After that, workers will be given a choice of paying for the bus service or joining a car pool, he said.

The company also plans to open a center that will provide job placement services and retraining.

Northrop’s decision concerned some Thousand Oaks civic leaders.

Some employees have played a role in civic affairs, including Thousand Oaks Councilman Lawrence Horner, a vice president at Northrop.

Horner, who already commutes two or three days a week to Hawthorne, said he expects that the move will have a negative effect on the city.

“Any time you lose a major business entity from the area, it’s bound to have an impact,” Horner said.

Shake-Up: Plant closing is part of major realignment at Northrop. D1