Waiting Game : Northrop Employees See Their Ranks Dwindle as Plant Closure Nears

George Antenucci sat holding a beer at a Thousand Oaks restaurant Wednesday, ignoring the blare of the music and laughter, thinking about his next move.

For three months, Antenucci, 29, who monitors production material for target drones, has felt queasy about the news that Northrop Corp. will close its Newbury Park plant.

The announcement of the closure came Nov. 7, a day Antenucci grimly calls “Black Wednesday.”

“I’m just waiting till I get my pink slip,” said Antenucci, an eight-year Northrop veteran. “I’m waiting until my hand is dealt to me, and until then, I don’t know how to play my cards.”

Antenucci was one of about 200 Northrop workers Wednesday who managed, if only temporarily, to escape the prospect of job hunting.

The group gathered at a party thrown by two former employees for current and former workers of the 28-year-old facility.

The plant closure means that all 1,800 Northrop employees there will be gone by the end of the year, either through transfers, layoffs or attrition.

Some have been told that they may go to other Northrop facilities in Hawthorne and Pico Rivera, but about 800 jobs will be lost, 400 of them layoffs.

Transfer notices already have been handed out to about 100 employees, the first 42 of which will become effective Feb. 15, although the moving date may be pushed back.

“Just about every week, certain groups are given their notices for transfers for other Northrop locations,” Northrop spokesman Mike Greywitt said.

An additional seven people have been laid off, although they may work until March 15.

For some, the get-together Wednesday was a bittersweet moment, a time to catch up with colleagues poised to leave what had become a second family to some.

Northrop “is more than just a workplace. I think it’s a hometown,” said Chris Staley, 39, who helped organize the affair. Staley, who left Northrop in November, 1989, now works as a senior engineer at Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne Division.

“You’ll see one, two, three generations of people working there, and now it’s being dissolved,” he said.

Antenucci is the second generation of his family to work at Northop.

In addition, his wife, a laminator, has worked there for seven years.

Dan Mills, who has worked at Northrop for the past 23 years, now works in production control.

Mills, 44, remembers one of his first jobs, building shipping boxes for the parachutes used in the Apollo space program.

“It was kind of a good feeling working for a national program,” Mills recalled. Nowadays, “a lot of people are unhappy because they have to leave. It’s hard for a lot of us.”

Mills’ wife was laid off from Northrop a year ago.

He added, “I could be getting a notice any time now.”

In one corner, a group of four women sat, drinks in hand, comparing notes about their futures.

One, who asked not to be identified, said her colleagues in the purchasing department have been sharing classified ads and job notices.

“I don’t know if I should be looking for a new job or not,” she said.

Although the company has established a job referral center, purchasing worker Janet Ashford, 25, said she is reluctant to use it.

“I’m afraid to go there. They’ll know I’m looking for a job, and I’ll be on a layoff list,” she said.

Ashford said she and others in the purchasing department are concerned that their jobs will be eliminated rather than transferred to Hawthorne.

Some of the workers Wednesday, who had worked at Northrop in the 1960s, have seen jobs come and go during the past three decades.

“I can understand their reluctance to move. . . . We’ve had many ups and downs,” said Richard Small, 55, of Thousand Oaks, who worked at the Newbury Park facility when it was still called Northrop Ventura.

He later transferred to Northrop’s Hawthorne plant, where he still works.

“There were a lot of people who were laid off, found jobs, and came back.”

Antenucci said his father, who worked at Northrop for 35 years until he retired two years ago, is devastated by the plant closure.

“He said someone had taken his home away, and he had no place to go back to,” said Antenucci. “I guess I feel the same way.”