Hughes Urges Its Workers to Push Saudi Arms Sale : Defense: A manager asks employees to write Congress, saying the deal would bring the firm business. Hughes says the campaign is voluntary.
Hungry for a piece of a lucrative arms package, Hughes Aircraft Co. is enlisting its employees in a campaign to build political backing for a $12- to $15-billion weapons sale to Saudi Arabia.
In a Jan. 3 mailing to employees of Hughes’ electro-optical and data systems group in El Segundo, a company manager urged workers to write their congressmen and Sens. Alan Cranston and John Seymour in support of the sale.
Employees were also furnished with form letters to elected officials, one of which says: “Your decision will affect the livelihoods of thousands of people like myself who work at Hughes.”
Company spokesman Richard Dore said similar mailings are being sent to all 68,000 Hughes employees nationwide. He said the effort would continue despite the Bush Administration’s announcement Jan. 4 that it is postponing consideration of the Saudi arms deal until the Persian Gulf crisis has ended.
“The letters might improve the chances for it to be considered,” Dore said late last week. “It’s important. Any large sale like that would be significant, possibly more so in light of the fact that the defense industry is not in that good shape right now.”
Dore said he did not know whether Hughes jobs will be lost if the Saudi weapons sale is not made. However, he said, “any time you lose business, there’s that potential.” Though employment at Hughes remained steady last year, the company lopped 9,300 employees from its payroll in 1989.
Worrying Hughes is the fate of the second installment of a massive arms package proposed for Saudi Arabia after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. If allowed, the sale would include F-15 jet fighters, M-1A tanks, Stinger missiles, and thousands of personnel carriers and trucks.
That would mean business for Hughes. The company’s El Segundo electro-optical and data systems group, for instance, makes night-vision systems and laser range finders for the M-1A tank. And Hughes’ radar systems group, also in El Segundo, builds radar equipment for the F-15s.
“A lot of (weapons) systems use Hughes electronics,” Dore said. “. . .We don’t make the big-ticket items, but we do (produce) electronics in them, so all this would be additional business.”
The first portion of the Saudi arms package, valued at $7 billion, was allowed to proceed in October. But the Bush Administration postponed the second portion in an apparent attempt to avoid conflict with Israel’s supporters in Congress at a crucial stage in the Persian Gulf crisis.
In the mailing to Hughes’ electro-optical and data systems group, R. D. Brandes, president of the group, called the weapons sale a “vital ingredient in maintaining the Saudis’ defense posture and in promoting peace and stability in the Middle East.”
He also portrayed the arms deal as important to Hughes. Brandes wrote employees: “Approval of this military sales package is important to all of us. Your help can make it happen. Accordingly, I urge you to write Senators Alan Cranston and John Seymour as well as your local congressional representative emphasizing your support of this transaction.”
Asked if such a message might unduly pressure employees, Dore said Hughes is making the appeal through its group presidents, not lower-level management, so workers do not feel obligated to join the letter-writing campaign.
Although Hughes is urging employees to turn over their signed form letters to company public relations officers, the letter also points out that they may write their own letters to Congress instead. This ensures that workers will not feel that management can tell who participates, Dore said.
“It’s simply a recommendation, and it’s up to them to decide,” he said. “No pressure.”
Two congressmen representing communities where Hughes workers live, Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach) and Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), said last week that they had not yet received letters from employees of the Westchester-based aerospace company.
Levine said the mailing would not make him modify his stance against the Saudi weapons transaction. The sale, he said, could destabilize the region by giving Saudi Arabia too much military strength.
“A lot of people have wanted to sell everything under the sun to Saudi Arabia regardless of whether it would dramatically alter the balance of power in the Mideast,” Levine said.
Rohrabacher disagreed. “They don’t need to write to me. I think that we should be selling our weapons systems to America’s allies so that they can help themselves. . . . And I think that Saudi Arabia is a friend of the United States of America.”
Rohrabacher added, however, that in the post-Cold War era, it would be a mistake for aerospace companies such as Hughes to count heavily on defense business.
“Our aerospace industry has got to take a long-term look or face oblivion,” Rohrabacher said. “Instead of concentrating on weapons deals, they should try to compete in commercial industry.”
