Displeased With California, Rohr Plans to Relocate Jobs Out of State

Confirming reports that the company plans to move some jobs out of California, the chief executive of Rohr Industries said recently that the aerospace manufacturer would not locate in California if it were starting up today.

Robert Goldsmith, who heads the Chula Vista-based concern, thus joined a growing chorus of California aerospace employers who have expressed displeasure with the high cost of doing business in Southern California. High taxes, labor and energy costs combined with building permit delays have put Rohr’s Chula Vista facility increasingly at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace, he said.

“If Fred Rohr hadn’t been born in San Diego, we wouldn’t be here today,” Goldsmith said in a reference to the company’s founder. A former Boeing engineer, Rohr founded the company, a manufacturer of jet engine nacelles, rings and other components, in Chula Vista in 1940.

Goldsmith said the manufacturer will reduce its 6,300-worker payroll in Chula Vista by at least 500 over the next two years and to 5,000 workers “plus or minus 1,000” by 1996 as it moves some operations out of state.

Goldsmith also said the company, which has 11,600 employees worldwide, will vacate a large but still undetermined chunk of its 185-acre facility in Chula Vista on San Diego Bay.

Goldsmith said the final number of job reductions will depend on the economy, but he left no doubt that Rohr’s long-term strategy is to move much of its labor- and energy-intensive jobs out of state. In recent years the company has built new plants in Arkansas, Texas and Maryland rather than expand in California to fill its growing backlog.

Business at the company has grown substantially since 1985 along with the huge upturn in orders for commercial airliners. Rohr’s revenues grew to $1.078 billion in fiscal 1990 from $626.7 million in 1986.

But most of the company’s new manufacturing capacity has been added out of state, Goldsmith said, partly because the state’s tough regulatory climate makes it more difficult for California manufacturers to get permits to build new plant space to meet higher volumes of orders. Of Rohr’s 11 plants, three are in California, seven are in other states and one is in France.

“What California is heading toward is stability for people in jobs regulating things and not for stability in jobs for people making things,” Goldsmith said.

Goldsmith said the same plant that took seven months for Rohr to build in Arkansas would have required at least three years to build in Chula Vista.