TRW Quietly Cuts 1,600 Jobs in Southland : Aerospace: The reductions are expected to continue. Workers say the moves have been made gradually, avoiding the attention that rivals received when they made big layoffs.

TRW Inc. has quietly eliminated at least 1,600 jobs from its Los Angeles-based aerospace operations in 1990, triggering about 500 employee layoffs, it was learned Monday. Cutbacks are expected to continue.

The Cleveland-based firm employs 15,600 workers at its Redondo Beach aerospace complex and at a facility near Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino. It employed 20,000 at the two operations as recently as 1987, when it was forced to lay off 1,000 workers as the result of cancellation of a secret military spacecraft program.

TRW is among the few major aerospace firms in Southern California that had not announced a major reduction in employment this year. Until recently, it has asserted that its employment would be fairly stable.

A spokeswoman said Monday that the company still considers its employment stable, since it has accommodated most of the job cuts without layoffs.

However, employees say the company has undergone significant layoffs throughout the year, making the cuts gradually, thereby avoiding attention. One woman who lost her job said a half dozen people were laid off in her small office and that she considers talk about stable employment a subterfuge.

“They just laid off a man who has been with the company for 22 years,” she said. “People are very unhappy.”

Virtually every major aerospace firm in Southern California has disclosed major layoffs, including 3,000 at Northrop, 8,600 at McDonnell Douglas and 4,000 at Lockheed.

The TRW cuts are smaller but have occurred over a longer period of time.

The layoffs have been in TRW’s Space and Defense Sector, which employs 25,900 nationwide, down from 30,500 at the beginning of 1988. The sector reported sales of $3.2 billion in 1989, about 44% of TRW’s $7.3 billion in revenue.

It was not known how many of the 500 layoffs were in the Los Angeles area but most are believed to have been taken locally. About 950 of 1,600 jobs eliminated nationally in the Space and Defense Sector were at the Redondo Beach and San Bernardino operations.

TRW said it did not have a specific estimate of how many job eliminations and layoffs would occur in the future; it is believed that as many as 1,500 more jobs could be pared by the end of next year.

Much of TRW’s defense business is classified, obscuring the extent to which the recent declines in defense spending are affecting its programs.

The company spokeswoman said she could not identify a single government program responsible for the job cutbacks. But TRW’s programs are taking some knocks.

Last June, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration canceled a $700-million TRW program to build an “orbital maneuvering vehicle,” often called the space tug. TRW had 280 employees on the program, and the company said it anticipated reassigning those workers to other programs.

Last month, Congress sharply reduced spending on the Milstar satellite program, cutting $500 million from the Air Force request for $1.1 billion. TRW is a major subcontractor on Milstar, a communications satellite designed to operate during a nuclear war.

Similarly, funding for the MX nuclear missile was cut to $655 million from a request for $1.7 billion. TRW provides systems engineering for the Air Force’s nuclear missile fleet.

Unlike the situation at a number of financially distressed aerospace firms, TRW’s profit has held up well, so far, in the defense downturn. It reported operating profit in aerospace of $231 million in 1989, up from $209 million in 1988, but down from $237 million in 1987.

The largest job cutbacks apparently have happened at TRW’s Space and Technology Group, the business operation that builds spacecraft for NASA and the Pentagon. In an internal announcement earlier this year, the group said it would cut 20% to 30% of its administrative and support staff.

TRW’s Systems Integration Group also has undergone a staff cutback, an employee said. The employee said that in the Data Services Organization, a part of the Systems Integration Group, several hundred layoffs had occurred in the last several years.

Asked why TRW did not disclose that it would lay off workers and eliminate 1,600 jobs, the company spokeswoman said most of the cuts have been done in small increments that did not lend themselves to a public announcement.

At 1990’s start, TRW officials said their business and employment would be stable during the year.

“While we are uncertain about what the Department of Defense funding will be, TRW feels its programs in the arena of command and control, surveillance, intelligence and other high-priority systems should position us well for both the short term and the long term,” a company vice president said last December.